A Case of Insanity
by Westron Wynde
Summary: Whilst London prepares to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubliee, personal tragedy strikes at the heart of Baker Street. To save a friend, Dr Watson must make the hardest decision of all... and live with the consequences. COMPLETE!
1. Chapter One

_**A Case of Insanity**_

**Chapter One**

"Watson," remarked Sherlock Holmes one stifling afternoon in mid June of 1897, "you should go, you really should."

I had other things on my mind that day, so I answered without thinking or registering that once again he had performed that eloquent, if presumptuous, trick of reading my thoughts without my having voiced them.

"I would," I replied. "Only, it is impossible at the present time."

Holmes regarded me over his steepled fingers. "For a man of letters, you have a remarkable distain for the correct and proper usage of the English language that at times borders on Philistinism. The definition of 'impossible', if my memory does not deceive me, is something that has little likelihood of happening or of being accomplished. In this instance, its application as an adequate description of your situation is inappropriate. It is not 'impossible' that you go; rather, you choose not to, and hide behind meaningless adjectives as a means of procrastination."

"Is that what I'm doing?" I countered warily.

"Indeed, and you are a poor exponent of the art. Your vacillation in this matter is both unpardonable and, may I add, unwarranted."

"Holmes," said I, glad for once to find him in disputatious mood, "have you ever thought that you might be a sesquipedalian?" [1]

He managed a mirthless grunt. "A man is judged by the company he keeps, and if I claim mine to be those somewhat florid, though expressive, words that appear so rarely in our everyday speech, then I trust I shall not be judged too harshly. I would rather bear the title of pedant than stand accused of the debasement of the language."

"No one would ever accuse you of that," I said with a smile.

"So, to return to my original question, why aren't you going?"

"How do you know that I am due to go anywhere?"

"Dear me," said Holmes, "first procrastination, now prevarication – Watson, your sins are too numerous to mention. Let us hope that the recording angel overlooks these, the most minor and forgivable of your failings. As to your question, that is not so great a mystery. Your actions are always most revealing. The _Daily Telegraph_ follows that predicable pattern of many a newspaper in always displaying the announcement of births, deaths and marriages on the same page, the very one you were reading before you laid it aside. Your hand then strayed to your watch-chain, as it does now."

It was true that unconsciously I had repeated the gesture, my fingers closing around the small band of gold that had once adorned my wife's hand.

"From there," Holmes continued, "your gaze was directed to the mantle. That cream envelope has been there since Monday evening."

"How can you tell?"

"Dust, my dear fellow. Mrs Hudson is another hide-bound by routine. She always dusts on a Monday. Today is Thursday."

He spoke with his usual authority, in the manner of a pedagogue lecturing to a room of awed and impressionable students. It was a voice that defied challenge, and one that I had not heard for many weeks. Therefore was my pain all the greater at having to correct him on the most elementary of mistakes.

"In matter of fact, Holmes, today is Friday."

His expression had become mildly strained and with the wannest of smiles did he attempt to make light of his mistake.

"No matter, whether Thursday or Friday, the same principle applies. If you look closely, you will observe that a fine layer of dust has settled on and around the envelope, but not beneath it, as one might expect had it been placed there more recently. As for the contents, the return address is that of a Dr Joseph Tarrant of Richmond. I recall you mentioning the fellow's name in connection with your bereavement. From there, it was no great feat to deduce that he has written to you in the expectation of enlisting your aid for some venture he has in mind. You, my dear fellow, have yet to reply, for I see your stock of envelopes has yet to be depleted."

I could not deny his assessment of the situation, for as ever Holmes had by his own methods divined my deepest secrets. I had my reasons for doing so, since the truth of the matter was that I was on the horns of a dilemma: whether a greater care of duty lay with a friend who steadfastly refused my help and another who clearly needed my assistance in his own hour of need.

To Holmes, the matter seemed simple enough; to me, however, it was not so easily squared with my conscience.

Under ordinary circumstances, I should have agreed to Dr Tarrant's request without hesitation. He asked little enough – that I look after his Surrey practice for a few weeks while he took his wife to the south coast in the hope that the sun and sea air might improve her delicate constitution. A refusal on my part would appear churlish, given that he had done as much for me and more during my own wife's final illness.

What preyed upon my mind was the prospect of leaving Holmes to his own devices for so long a period. This virtuoso display of his prowess regarding my correspondence, even with his lapse in concentration, normally would have been remarkable enough; that it came after nearly a week of his refusing to set foot outside our rooms, eking out a meagre existence on weak tea, dry toast and too much time with his own thoughts, was something to be lauded to the heavens.

As glad as I was to see his near return to the form of happier days, I was not altogether deceived. Despite what he would have me believe, I had my doubts about this apparent recovery. I have noted elsewhere that Holmes possessed considerable acting skills, and I could not be certain that I was not witness to a performance laid on for my benefit.

"You are correct," I answered in reply to his analysis of my present dilemma. "All the same, I cannot go."

"Ah," said he, "we are making progress. First, 'impossible', now 'cannot', suggesting that the ability exists, but one which you deny. You are wavering, Watson."

"Not enough, I fear."

"Yet go you should," said he decisively, rising to his feet and inspecting the litter on the mantle. Finding a vesta, he struck it and applied the flame to a cigarette. "The change would do you the world of good. If I may say so, my dear fellow, you appear to be somewhat drawn."

"I cannot think why."

The briefest of smiles passed across his face. "Your concern does you credit. However, you cannot wall yourself up in this mausoleum forever. I have been most grateful for your assistance these past weeks, but it would be unforgiveable of me to monopolise your time when other good causes await your attention. My choices should not dictate yours."

I held his gaze, wondering if he knew quite how erratic his behaviour had been since our return from Poldhu Bay. To my mind, his actions had been less from choice and more from compulsion.

"And you worry needlessly," he continued. "I am quite recovered."

"Are you?"

"Yes," he said, far too quickly for my liking. "The rejection of my thesis was a blow, I will grant you, but these things must be accepted for what they are. The truth of the matter is that I have challenged the universal theory – I have upset the apple cart, to use one of those colourful phrases that Lestrade employs to good effect – and those who have the most to lose have been the most vociferous in their condemnation."

To this, I said nothing. If believing that brought him any measure of peace and calmness of mind, then it was a theory I was ready to back to the hilt. To my own way of thinking, however, the reason was simple: he had been wrong.

I had never quite understood why he had conceived of the notion that Chaldean roots lay at the heart of the Cornish language, due, as he claimed, to interaction with Phoenician tin traders. At the time, I had been glad he had found what I thought was a harmless diversion to occupy his mind. I had not expected it, in the aftermath of the Tregennis case, to become an all-consuming passion with him, one which he pursued with the fervour of the obsessed. Finally, seeing his condition on the verge of deterioration, I was forced to agree to his insistence that we return to London so that he could continue his studies at the British Museum. Thus was our sojourn brought to a premature end.

Back at Baker Street, Holmes spent long days and even longer nights absorbed in study of the subject, leaving a paper trail of chaos in his wake that left both Mrs Hudson and myself at a loss. When he spoke of my assistance, it was strictly in my role as organiser of his affairs and sounding board for his ideas. It was certainly not for my opinion – any suggestion I dared to venture was summarily dismissed.

Had he listened to me, I might have been able to tell him that he had set himself up in opposition to the accepted thinking on the subject. While informed questioning of supposed established facts is to be welcomed, my own reading had revealed that scholars had long since identified the roots of Cornish as being Celtic, itself related to a common ancestor from which were descended most of the languages of Europe. [2]

Against my better judgement and ignored advice, the manuscript was sent to a notable Camford expert in the field. His reply was much as I had expected. Holmes's initial outrage at so curt a rejection of what he had believed was his _magnum opus_ festered into sullen disaffection and the onset of the blackest of moods, the like of which I had not seen since I had hurried to his side at the Hotel Dulong in the April of 1887. [3]

On that occasion, it had taken rest and a case to restore him to a state nearing his usual self – which is why I had my doubts when Holmes now told me he had thrown off his depression quite so easily. In many things, he commanded my complete trust, but not in matters of his health.

I was thus in a worse quandary than ever.

"If I go," I began, watching his uneasy wanderings about the room, "would you come with me? I'm sure Tarrant wouldn't mind and—"

"No, no," he said. "It is quite out of the question. The whole basis of my thesis must be reworked. I must start again, and that requires my presence here, not in the wilds of Surrey."

"You could bring your work with you."

A sheaf of papers slid from the desk at the impatient sweep of his hand. "Where the devil did I put my notes on diphthongs? Professor Bennett made several salient points on the nature of the long 'e' that I must address."

As several books joined the growing pile of notebooks and papers on the floor, I rose, found the journal for which he was searching and held it out to him. A gleam lit in his eyes, their colour intensified by the blue-black bruising of sleeplessness that surrounded them. Eagerly he reached for it; just as quickly, I drew back.

"Why is this so important to you?" I asked, seeing a frown settle on his brow.

"It _matters_," said he with emphasis. He held out his hand, and I could not help but notice the slight tremor that shook a once steady limb. "Give me that book, Watson."

I ignored him. "_This_ is more important than your cases?" I gestured to the mantle and the stack of unopened letters from potential clients that grew with every passing day. "What of them?"

"Cases," he said bitterly. "Is that your answer for everything? Have you read any of these 'appeals' in which you place so much faith, Doctor?"

"Have you?"

"I do not need to do so to know that they will contain the usual bleat concerning the petty inconveniences of daily life. The stolen jewel, the unfaithful lover, the missing dog. What glory is there in delving into this unspeakable mire of human misery?"

"It mattered to you, once."

"So it did." His shoulders sagged and a little of his ire left him. "'Fond man'," he murmured, his gaze drifting from mine, "'that thus dost spend in _an ungrateful art_ thy dearest days, tiring thy wits and toiling to no end, but to attain that _idle smoke of praise_'. How very apt." [4]

"Do you believe that?" I asked.

"Have I not toiled? Yet I have precious little to show for it."

"You told me once that you had it in you to make your name famous, Holmes. Well, surely you have that. Now half the world knows of you."

"Only half?" He snorted mirthlessly. "And if I have, it is only through your efforts. I take no pride in that. I have prostituted my talents in a manner that would put any third-rate music hall performer to shame. Now indeed are my wits so very tired."

"Yes, I am aware of that."

"Are you?" He gave me a challenging look. "No doubt you have some opinion on my condition."

His tone had become brittle again and I considered my response with care. "Under such circumstances, something to help you sleep might be in order."

"A soporific, Doctor?" he returned fiercely. "Thank you, but no. I do not think I can stomach another dose of your pious reprobation for my succumbing to the temptations of the past."

He hesitated, took a deep breath and with great effort that manifested itself in his tightly-clenched fists and jaw did he seek to regain his control.

"Forgive me, Watson," said he quietly. "I did not mean to speak so harshly."

"I did not take offence. You're not well, Holmes. Surely you must see that you aren't yourself."

"It will pass," said he, forcing a smile. "Work is the panacea for a thousand ills."

"Some would disagree with you. Everyone needs sleep, even you."

With a deep sigh that seemed to be dredged from the depths of his soul, he sank into the nearest chair and nodded dolefully.

"There is truth in what you say, Watson. What did Shakespeare call it? 'The death of each day's life'? By extension, if a man cannot sleep, then he cannot die. Have you ever thought what a tedious thing it must be to live forever? No? Well, that eventuality is unlikely to trouble me. In any case, it is not sleep that is the problem."

"Then what?"

A curt shake of the head was the only answer he would permit. I was allowed so far, and no further. Whatever ailed him would remain his secret, glimpsed only in the outward symptoms produced by a turbulence of a troubled mind.

"It is enough," said he, "that I am aware of the cause. The solution too lies within my own hands. I need…" He paused and glanced up at me. "Earlier, Watson, you asked me why. My answer is simply this I _have_ to do. I do not ask you to understand, but I would have your support."

"Always, Holmes. Was that ever in doubt?"

A faint smile warmed his pallid cheeks. "Then go to Surrey and leave me to my research. While I am thus absorbed, I am quite content. As for you, my dear friend, there is, as the saying goes, a certain relief in change, even though by shifting we may be bruised anew."

Moved by this pronouncement, I found I could not deny him that which he so dearly craved. I placed the book in his hands and he accepted it in grateful silence. I had one final condition, however, before I acceded to his direction.

"I will go," said I, "if you will dine out with me tonight."

He gave this a moment's consideration. "Those are your terms?"

I nodded.

"This would convince you that I am well enough to be left to my own devices?"

"Not entirely, but it would certainly help."

A flicker of interest showed in his tired face. "Simpson's?"

"If you wish."

"Your treat?"

"Naturally."

He tossed the book aside and roused himself from his chair. "Then write to your fellow medico and tell him of your imminent arrival," he called over his shoulder as he took himself into his bedroom, "for dine we shall!"

_**Continued in Chapter Two**_

* * *

[1] Sesquipedalian – one given to using long words.

[2] Which is true. Cornish, along with Breton, shares descent from Southwestern Brythonic, itself derived from Celtic, the origins of which lie in the common ancestor of many European languages, Indo-European. So, yes, Holmes is barking up the wrong tree.

[3] See the opening chapters of 'The Reigate Puzzle'.

[4] Samuel Daniel, poet and playwright, 1563-1619


	2. Chapter Two

_**A Case of Insanity**_

**Chapter Two**

We resolved our differences over roast beef and came to a compromise that was amicable to us both: that I would stay in Surrey during the week and return to Baker Street for Saturday evenings. Holmes would keep himself busy and, if he found himself in need of assistance, then I was only ever a telegram away. What he did not know was that I had an ally in Mrs Hudson, who was under the strictest of instructions to inform me without delay should she notice anything unusual in her tenant's behaviour.

How would I define unusual, she had asked. I told her she would know it if she saw it, and we left it at that.

Sunday found me in the charming riverside town of Richmond-upon-Thames at the home of Dr Joseph Tarrant. He had been delighted to see me, perhaps overly so, for he was effusive in his welcome and several times declared most earnestly how grateful he was for my assistance. I believe had I asked it, he would have handed over the title deeds to his house without complaint in reward for my presence.

It was enough that I was able to help in his time of need, for I saw something of my former self reflected in him. To bear witness to the suffering of one's loved ones produces an anguish that knows no bounds, compounded by the knowledge of one's own helplessness in the face of the relentless march of disease.

In the case of Tarrant's wife, the asthma that had driven them from smoggy London to the cleaner air of the upstream Thames appeared not to have improved. Pitifully thin, she stirred little from her chair and the slightest exertion brought on fits of wheezing which drove her husband near to despair. Tarrant, a shadow of the confident, ingenuous young man I remembered, now ground down by care and prematurely grey, implied that this holiday to the south coast was by way of a last resort. Their evident desperation was enough to deepen my guilt at having delayed so long with my reply, and I was heartily glad to see them safely on their way.

The following week was split neatly between the needs of Tarrant's patients, mainly elderly ladies with various aches and pains and the need for companionship, and exploring my new surroundings. Richmond in early summer, when the idle river, winking and gurgling in the flashing sunlight, laps lazily around the hulks of drifting barges and offers up tiddlers to enterprising boys with makeshift fishing rods, has something of the picturesque that leads one into the happy notion of forgetting that the metropolis is only a few miles downstream.

Watching the deer in the park, I could well believe that I was in the midst of a rural idyll or stepped back into the pages of history as I stood before the crumbling Tudor gatehouse under which once passed monarchs and their courtiers. I could have been a thousand miles from Baker Street – and yet my thoughts were never far from home.

As the week drew on, so my certainty deepened that to have left Holmes so for long a period of time in his current frame of mind was a mistake. I began to dread the coming of the post, lest some missive arrive, telling of his worsening condition or of some new development. My concerns, however, proved unfounded. No ill tidings arrived, and I was able to return to our rooms the following Saturday with my conscience at ease.

On my arrival, Mrs Hudson reported that Mr Holmes was much the same, coming and going at all hours, eating frugally, and still littering the place with his papers and the like so that she dared not set foot in the room to do her usual tidying. She had concluded with an unexpected piece of news, by saying that she had heard him singing.

"Singing, Mrs Hudson?" I asked.

"Yes, sir," she replied, her tone suggesting disapproval, "and in the dead of night too, when respectable citizens should be sound asleep. You know I'm not one to complain, Doctor, but I need my sleep even if Mr Holmes doesn't."

"Yes, Mrs Hudson. I'll tell him to confine his singing to the daytime."

"And tell him, if he must sing – and I do not say that his voice is not passable, Doctor – then let it be something cheerful. There's enough misery in the world without listening to dirges in a foreign language."

"This language – it wouldn't be Cornish, would he?"

"I'm sure I couldn't say, sir," she said primly. "All I know is that it's a very mournful thing to hear at two o'clock in the morning and I do wish he wouldn't do it."

I assured her I would do what I could and went in search of my lyrical friend. I must confess that I did not know what to make of this turn of events. I had known him to hum – a trait that I have never found endearing – and sometimes to mutter the words in accompaniment to a piece of music, but to sing in the dead of night and for the simple joy of it? That his repertoire was conducted in Cornish complicated matters still further.

It was to my relief, therefore, that I found Holmes excitable and somewhat distracted but otherwise in good spirits. He claimed to be making progress with his thesis and there was much talk of aspirated mutations and unmutated consonants. I gathered this was all very important, although I would have been hard pressed to say why, but I gave the occasional encouraging nod of agreement, which seemed to please him.

Then came the night, during which I was rudely roused from my sleep in the early hours by a pained lament coming from the floor below and the howling of a dog outside. For the sake of Mrs Hudson and our long-suffering neighbours, I dragged myself from my bed and went to investigate. As expected, I found Holmes seated by the empty grate, a pipe in his hand and a thick halo of blue smoke about his head. He ceased his singing abruptly when I entered and a look of mild surprise took shape on his face. When I stated the reason for my unexpected appearance, he apologised profusely.

"Do forgive me, I was thinking aloud," said he.

"Yes, I heard you," said I, opening the window to release the fumes. "Less thinking, Holmes, more singing, to be strictly accurate."

"Ah, yes, a sad tale of unrequited love that ends on the scaffold. A song not heard since the death of the last Cornish speaker in 1777. What did you make of it?"

"Not much at three o'clock in the morning."

"Is that the time?" said he, unconcernedly. "I thought it was later. All the same, I do apologise for disturbing you. I didn't realise my voice was quite so loud that it carried all the way to Surrey."

I paused in pouring myself a drink. "Surrey, Holmes? I returned yesterday."

"Did you?" He appeared confused and had some difficulty concealing it. "Yes, of course you did, my dear fellow."

This concerned me more than his impromptu rendition of an old Cornish ballad. "You don't remember, do you?"

He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "I fear, Watson, you have lost your sense of humour. It was a mere jest on my part, nothing more."

"A poor one," I chided, not altogether convinced by his explanation.

"Well, well, no doubt hunger has dulled your mood," said he, pushing himself up from his chair decisively. "Shall we break our fast at the Café Royal? I understand they glaze their bacon with honey and offer quails' eggs as an alternative to that of the humble chicken."

"Holmes," I said, exasperated, "it's three in the morning!"

"Is it?"

"Yes. I told you so not a minute ago."

"Most certainly you did not. I may be a little tired, Watson, but there is nothing wrong with my hearing."

"It's not your hearing I'm worried about," I said with concern.

"Are you quite sure? Well, if you say so. I could have sworn it was later. The night-time does drag. What a hindrance to busy people. In the future, someone will come up with the idea of doing away with night altogether, then we shall live in perpetual day, like the inhabitants of the far north. How much more productive we shall be. It shall certainly be the end of crime."

My brain had yet to shift the stupefying effects of sleep and I struggled to keep up with his rambling train of reasoning. "I'm sorry, Holmes, I don't follow you," I said wearily, sinking down onto the nearest chair.

"Have you forgotten your Book of Common Prayer?" said he, pacing uneasily and clasping and unclasping his hands in that restless manner of his. "'Thou shalt not be afraid of any terror by night'. Mark you, Watson, that phrase – 'by night'. What faceless terror can survive the light of day? Yes, perhaps that is the answer. That we should sleep by day and defy the demons of night by our wakefulness."

I fancied that I began dimly to see where this was leading. "Demons of the night? Do you mean to say that you are having nightmares? Is that why you can't sleep?"

"To sleep," he murmured, pausing to gingerly rub his temples with his fingers. "Perchance to dream. But what dreams, Watson, what lunatic ruminations of the mind!" He released a heartfelt sigh that seemed to echo with near despair. "It is not that I cannot sleep. Rather it is that I fear that one night I shall close my eyes and not be able to re-awake. What then? Dreams are said to be the insanity of each day's sanity. Are dreamers then insane? Are the asylums peopled by those who know perpetual sleep? Can no one wake them?"

His manner was such that I was quite taken aback. Ever one to cultivate the greatest of control, now his voice was several pitches higher, his eyes staring and his whole frame atremble. If I had not intervened to stop him, I was seized by the certainty that he would have collapsed in a state of nervous agitation.

"Holmes, calm yourself," I said firmly, taking him by his shaking shoulders and forcing him to look at me. "This is wild talk, most unlike you. Take a deep breath and sit down. Now, let us examine the situation rationally."

"I fear rationality deserted me long ago," said he, though meekly obeying my instruction.

"Nonsense," I chided. "I have found that some relief may be obtained by telling others of one's nightmares."

"Bringing them into the light of sanity thus robs of them of their power, you mean?" Holmes gave me a dubious look but consented. "At this juncture, I am quite prepared to try anything. Well, there is not much to tell. It is always the same. I am paralysed by some freezing horror. There's a mist, dark, impenetrable, all around me. I know something is within it that speaks of menace and the most unutterable evil. I try to call out; I cannot. It comes for me and I cannot escape it." He swallowed hard. "And then I wake up. Now, Watson, tell me I am not completely mad."

"Not mad, Holmes…" Something he had said had struck a chord at the back of my mind and had awakened unpleasant memories of a comparable experience. A frightening possibility now occurred to me. "How long have you had these nightmares?" I asked.

"A few months."

"Since Poldhu Bay? Since the experiment with Devil's-foot root?"

He nodded bleakly. "So, now you know. The worst of it is I have no one to blame but myself. I am condemned by my own folly."

"Dear heavens," I murmured. "Why did you not tell me sooner?"

He sprang from his chair and turned his back on me, head bowed, his hand clutching at the mantle for support. "What would you have done? What can you do now I have told you? Despite the faith I have in your medical skills, my dear fellow, I fear this is out of your hands."

He had voiced my own concerns. In dealing with a poison unlisted in any work of toxicology and the only man who understood its workings buried deep in central Africa, I did not hold out much hope for a simple remedy to Holmes's problem.

"Perhaps Dr Agar might be able to suggest something," I ventured.

Holmes snorted. "It was because of Dr Agar's advice that I was thrust into this absurd situation in the first place. I was forced to go on pain of breakdown and yet I find that the precipice yawns before me. No, Watson, I have little faith in your Dr Agar."

I was tempted to remind him that the Harley Street specialist had warned him to avoid taking cases and surrender himself to complete rest, something that Holmes had chosen wilfully to ignore. If blame lay anywhere in the matter, it was with him, and, I admit, with myself for having failed to prevent his worse excesses whilst in Cornwall.

"Besides," Holmes went on, "what could he tell me that I have not already discerned for myself? He would say that I needed rest, yet that lies at the heart of my problem. These are uncharted waters and I find myself paddling my small raft alone."

"No, not alone."

"I appreciate your concern," said he, offering me a faint smile, "however I cannot expect you to understand something of which you have no knowledge."

"Perhaps I do. I suffered some lingering effects."

"You did?"

"For a week or so, yes, but that was three months ago."

Holmes accepted this with equanimity. "There, then my experience is not so unusual, except in the length of time. Perhaps my exposure was greater than yours. You did pluck me from the jaws of despair, after all."

"Not quickly enough, it seems. There has to be _something_ we can do."

"There is," he said determinedly. He selected his clay pipe from the rack and recharged it from the Persian slipper. "We must wait and place our faith in – what is it you doctors call it? Ah, yes, _expectant_ medicine. The problem will resolve itself one way or another, either in my complete recovery or descent into insanity. My one consolation is that I have yet to suffer the same fate as the unfortunate Tregennis brothers. As you say, the event was several months ago. If it has not driven me mad yet, then I would say there is an even chance that the symptoms will vanish in their own time."

"Yes, but—"

"Not another word," he interjected. "This is an inconvenience, nothing more. I have decided on my course and must remain fast. Now more than ever it is vital that I have work. Go back to bed, Watson. I have my _Proverbs and Rhymes in Cornish_ to keep me amused until the coming of dawn." [1]

"Do you imagine that I can sleep after what you have told me?" I protested. "To know that you are down here, in turmoil – I can find no peace after that."

Holmes sighed. "I should not have mentioned it. Now we shall both watch night turn to day. Really, my dear fellow, you worry needlessly. I shall be right again soon enough."

"Until you are, I cannot return to Surrey."

"You must. Duty demands it."

"Then come with me."

He shook his head. "The offer is kind but misguided. When you speak of wooded towpaths and trim-kept riverside villas with your customary enthusiasm, I must confess that the attraction quite escapes me. I place my faith in the healing properties of routine and familiar surroundings. No, I am quite comfortable here, as I am sure you would be in your own bed rather than on the sofa."

I took it that he regarded our conversation at an end, for he had settled himself in his chair and his gaze was directed at the volume that lay open on his knee. Long experience had taught me that if Holmes had decided that that was an end of the matter, then no prompting on my part was liable to draw him out. Under such circumstances, there was little to be gained in remaining, especially as I had been effectively dismissed from the room. It was obvious to me that he was desirous of his own company, the equal of my desire to know more of his condition.

In a battle of wills, Holmes's was always destined to be the stronger. I gave up the struggle. At the door, however, I paused and looked back.

"Why were you singing?"

Holmes spared me a look of amused languor. "I had the misfortune to break a string on my violin some nights ago and have yet to purchase a replacement. Until then, when the mood takes me, and the night is too quiet, I must shift for myself as best I can. You will make nothing sinister of that, I hope. Good night, Watson, and, I trust, pleasant dreams."

_**Continued in Chapter Three**_

* * *

[1] Written in 1866 by William Borlase. The Cornish language was the subject of considerable scholarly interest in the 19th century, and saw a revival in the 20th century.


	3. Chapter Three

_**A Case of Insanity**_

**Chapter Three**

I returned in exile to my bed, but it was not to sleep. After such a revelation, rest was impossible.

As was his custom, Holmes had told me what he thought I needed to know, which in this instance fell woefully short of a complete picture of his condition. I had heard enough to stir my concern and leave me with many questions, none of which Holmes was prepared to answer. Long exposure to his aloofness and unnecessary secrecy had made me immune to its effects on a personal level, but speaking professionally it was frustrating.

As Holmes was fond of saying, theorising before the acquisition of sufficient data is a capital mistake. Here I had a patient who had provided me with the barest of details and then left me scrabbling in the dark. Rather than confide the depth of his problem, I fancy he would have preferred to sit in his chair and quietly go mad – a possibility which I had yet to discount.

What I did know, however, was that his calm assertion that his condition was likely to vanish in its own time was likely misjudged. Three months after the event, he should not still have been plagued by nightmares, the lingering legacy of that accursed poison. That they were as potent as they had ever been was worrying. Were his nightly torments coming to an end, I should have expected reports of the beginning of an improvement.

With the sky lightening above the roofs of the houses above, I asked myself the pivotal question. Why, with our shared experience and equal exposure, was Holmes still affected long while I was not?

He had lit the lamp and perhaps had inadvertently inhaled the first concentrated gases. I had had my back to the window, with the breath of the freshening wind to clear my head when the toxic fumes began to take hold. I _had_ pulled him out – and the memory of his horror-stricken face was one which shall stay with me forever.

The other factor which I could not discount was his condition at the time. He had been low in spirits and health, and any benefits he may have derived from our short holiday had not had long enough to make a difference before we were thrown headlong into the Tregennis case. The introduction of such a poison into a mind already weakened was likely to be more devastating than to one in relative health, as I had been. Add to that the endless nights without sleep, and I began to see why he was held still under the spell of the Devil's-foot root.

At the time, Holmes had in jest described our actions as insanity; how ironic then that the folly of our actions might yet result in that very state.

The situation could not continue. Unless some intervention took place and soon, his condition would not resolve itself happily. That sinister impression that had left its mark upon my mind the day I had witnessed the removal of the Tregennis brothers with their wild glazed eyes and contorted faces to the Helston asylum now hardened into a very real fear that I would live to see the day when that same fate awaited my friend. It drove me up from my bed and downstairs, where I found Holmes nodding over a Cornish dictionary.

I gently shook him back to his senses. He awoke with a start and stared wide-eyed at me as though I was the very Devil incarnate. Then, with a sigh of relief, his features relaxed into a weary smile and he patted the hand I had laid on his shoulder.

"Watson, it's you," said he. "What are you doing up? I thought you had gone back to bed."

"I could not sleep," I admitted. "Holmes, we must talk."

He shook his head. "We have nothing to talk about, my dear fellow. Let the matter lie."

"I must insist. We _must_ get you help, and now while there is still time."

His expression hardened. He flung the book away and sprang from his chair to round on me. "I thought we had agreed that I am the best judge of my condition," said he fiercely. "You are meddling in matters that do not concern you, Doctor."

Holmes, when his temper is roused, presents a formidable opponent, one liable to intimidate a lesser man by the force of his demeanour alone. It is not often that I rise to the challenge, but on occasion I can prove myself his equal, as I did now. What was at stake was too important to let him have his way.

"I cannot stand idly by and watch while you…" I could not bring myself to say it. "Suffer," I finished, although the word was quite inadequate. "I would not see a dog endure such torments as you are now."

"You dissemble poorly as usual," said he. "What you meant to say was 'go mad'."

"Yes, to put it bluntly. Speaking as your doctor—"

"Ah, I thought I recognised that _superior_ tone."

"And your friend, I am _deeply_ concerned."

"And I am _deeply_ irritated that you persist," he retorted.

"As I am, that you blatantly refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of your condition," I replied hotly. "For how much longer do you think this nonsensical talk of Phoenician tin traders and mutated diphthongs will hold the inevitable at bay?"

"Nonsensical?" he echoed.

There is a good reason why I do not let my temper get the better of me. It is because I lose all sense of self-regulation and touch on subjects in anger which would better be left unsaid. In this respect, Holmes makes for an uncomfortable sparring partner, for he is wont to take offence where other men would counter with a comment on my own shortcomings. Now, as ever, I regretted my hasty words. Having come this far, however, I could not so easily take them back.

"Is that your opinion?" he asked, too calmly for my liking.

"Yes," I admitted. "I had hoped you would see it for yourself long before now."

"I see," said he coldly. "I had anticipated opposition to my thesis, but not from this quarter. I understand now – yes, it explains all those snide remarks of yours. Did you intend to undermine my research? You have clearly sided with those who trump the Brythonic theory over all the evidence to the contrary and have systematically attempted to sabotage my work!"

"Holmes, if you believe that, then your judgement is worse affected than I feared. Do you really imagine that the origin of a dead language matters one jot to me compared with the damage you are doing to your health?"

I searched his expression for an answer, and found there only simmering resentment. "Strangely enough, Doctor, your attitude does not surprise me. I am tempted to remind you of Johnson's repost to Boswell: 'you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both'. Never was a truer word spoken or more apt!"

In the long silence that followed, I became aware that we were not alone. In the doorway, in dressing gown and shawl was Mrs Hudson, the look of embarrassment on her face quite the equal of mine. Holmes bowed his head and turned away to gaze out of the window, leaving me to mollify the awkward situation.

"You'll forgive me for interrupting, sirs," said the good lady. "But I thought you should know that I've given up trying to sleep now."

"I'm sorry we disturbed you, Mrs Hudson," I apologised. "We were…" I glanced across at Holmes, who still had his back to me. "Discussing a few matters, that's all."

"Yes, I heard you. Well, now I'm up, I was going to put the kettle on. Would you like a cup of tea, sir?"

"That would be most welcome."

"I'll make it sweet," said she, casting a doubtful glance in my silent companion's direction. "Nothing like a nice cup of tea for settling the nerves after an upset. I won't be long."

She departed, closing the door behind her. From the slump of Holmes's shoulders and the general air of despondency that his posture suggested, I thought it best to let him speak in his own time. Gradually, and with the deepest sigh that is possible for a human being to produce, he straightened and forced himself to speak.

"When a man," he began slowly, "finds himself making more apologies than sensible conversation, he must face the inevitable truth that he has fallen far from that behaviour expected by decent society and…" He paused for emphasis. "And that which is owed to a friend."

"I am not without fault in the matter," I admitted. "If I am guilty of single-mindedness, then it springs only from concern for a person I have come to know and admire."

He turned but would not meet my eye. "Very well, Watson, you shall have your way. I am in your hands. What is to be my penance?"

"Our first call should be to Dr Agar."

"He is not a specialist in the area of exotic poisons."

"No, but his particular province is that of the mind, Holmes, and that is where your problem lies. If he cannot help, then he may be able to suggest someone who can. We shall see him on Monday."

"I very much doubt it," said he. "The good doctor is most likely to have left Monday clear in his appointment book. Apart from a few poor souls in mental anguish, the capital is in festive mood. Have you forgotten that Tuesday has been set aside for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee?"

It had slipped my mind, although quite how, when the papers had been full of nothing else for the past few weeks, was probably due to my having concerns closer to home. On Tuesday, 22nd June, was to be held a public celebration of the Queen's sixty years upon the throne. The bunting was already out, buildings had been cleaned and the roads scrubbed. There was to be parade through the streets, on a route that would take the Queen's open carriage through the highest and lowest areas of the capital, culminating in a Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul's Cathedral. With people from home and abroad converging on London's hotels and boarding houses, the crowds were expected to be in their thousands.

With the city in uproar, it did not surprise me at all that Dr Agar was likely to be unavailable until later in the week when the disruption to normal practice had died down. It was a blow, but having waited this long, a few more days did not seem to me to make much difference.

"Wednesday then," I said. "In the meantime, you shall stay with me in Richmond."

Holmes grimaced.

"I must insist."

"And I see that I must comply," said he ruefully.

Despite his reluctance, I fancy that the quaint riverside town did not entirely fail to impress. By afternoon, we were wandering along the dappled towpath, watching the ebb and flow of the Thames as it lapped at the embankment. The change of scenery had a most beneficial effect on him, going some way to resurrecting the spark of that keen power of mental detachment which had served him so well in the past.

For three hours we walked, up through Kingston and past the red-brick pile of Hampton Court Palace. Holmes discoursed at length on our return journey about the Tudor monarchs and their dynastic ambitions which lay at the heart of their complex marital affairs, ending with the comment that the history of these isles might have looked very different if King Henry VIII's first wife had borne him a son.

"But he did have a male heir," I reminded him.

"Only after he had divorced his first wife and beheaded his second, acquiring two daughters in the process," my companion explained. "By which time the religious and political implications were already far advanced."

"Well, well," I remarked, "one lives and learns."

"And then one dies and everything becomes an irrelevance," Holmes countered, drawing deeply on his cigarette.

"I cannot agree with you there," I had countered, concerned by the sudden morbid turn his thoughts had taken. "If you take that line, then what is the point of doing anything?"

"It passes the time."

"My dear friend—"

"Have you ever thought," said he suddenly, his gaze fixed upon a crust of bread that was bobbing on the brown water and attracting the attention of several sucking mouths from the depths, "that roach lead a most charmed existence?"

"Not particularly. The prospect of ending up in a frying pan has very little appeal."

"Ah, but that is where they have the upper hand. Mankind is plagued with the knowledge of his own mortality. Your roach, however, lives for the moment. He acknowledges his hunger and acts upon it. He seizes the worm without thought to the consequences."

"And ends up on the fisherman's hook."

"That is the chance he takes. Even when he is plucked from the waters, he does not realise his ultimate fate."

"If he did, he would not take the worm."

"Granted," Holmes mused. "If he did, he would be stifled into inaction. That he does not is evidence of his advantage over mankind. Foresight is nothing short of a curse."

"You will not pretend," I said with amusement, "that you are able to foresee the future?"

He shrugged lightly. "We all must die, Watson. That much is certain. However, I contend that the short-term prediction is by far the most detrimental to the human condition."

"I'm afraid I don't follow."

"A practical demonstration shall prove the point well enough," he explained. "Take our current situation, walking alongside the river: what could possibly happen next? A wind may rise up and cast one of us into the water. I could trip over a tree root and fall with the same result."

"But the probability is that we will continue in our walk."

"Quite so," said Holmes. "You have made a prediction based on the known facts. By that same process have I glimpsed my own immediate future and it does not bode well."

I caught his arm and brought him to a halt. "What is it?"

"That Dr Agar will recommend my removal for a period of time to a private asylum."

I fear that for a good few moments, I stared at him in muted stupefaction, entirely taken aback that such a thought had ever crossed his mind.

"Do not look so shocked, my dear fellow," said Holmes, offering me a faint smile. "It is not a pleasant prospect, but the most likely. How better to ensure that I follow his direction? I took his advice last time and the result is stood before you, clear for all to see. By returning to him on Wednesday, I acknowledge that he is better placed to determine my care than am I and agree to submit to more drastic action to arrest what you yourself have described as a worsening condition."

His earlier musings, coupled with this admission, suddenly began to make sense. "This concern of yours is why you have not acted before?"

He nodded. "It was a consideration, yes."

"It will not come to that," I tried to assure him. "Dr Agar is a most reasonable man—"

"Dealing with a most unreasonable patient who chose to ignore his previous advice in the most blatant manner and comes to him again seeking treatment for a condition of his own making. Now, Doctor, what would you do with such a person in order to save him from his own folly?"

"What you suggest would be my last resort."

Holmes frowned and began walking again, using the tip of his cane to sweep pebbles from his path and into the water where they disappeared into the murky depths.

"I fancy I have come to mine," said he. "No, Watson, let me finish. I am quite resolved to my fate. Perhaps it is for the best. My faith in my own judgement is shaken to the core. The accusations I levelled at you this morning are proof to me of that. If I can believe such things of the most honest and loyal of souls that it has ever been my pleasure to know, then of what else am I capable? You tell me to take cases, but if I cannot trust my own judgement, then why should anyone else? What errors should I make if I am turned loose on the problems of another? Heaven forbid that my mistaken testimony should send an innocent to the gallows."

I gave his words due thought. "There may be a simple answer to your problem."

"Oh, I trust there is. However…" He sunk his chin upon his chest and fixed his gaze upon the ground. "If it cannot be avoided, I would ask one thing of you."

"Anything."

"Do not visit."

I came to an abrupt halt. "Holmes, how can you—"

He held up his hand. "I'm afraid I must insist. If I am beyond redemption, tell the world I am dead and let that be an end of the matter. 'Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad'. Words to the wise, Watson."

I began to protest, but Holmes continued regardless.

"Now, I must return to London. This Surrey air is far too heady. It lacks that taint of pollution that makes our city air so fortifying."

"I thought we agreed you would stay with me."

Holmes shook his head. "If I am to lose my liberty on Wednesday, then there are things that must be done. Mycroft will have to be told, of course; that is not an interview I relish. My brother can be as ruthless as those old Tudor monarchs when the mood takes him. He operates from a position of pure logic that permits little room for sentiment. If he considered it expedient, I dare say he would have me carted off to the nearest asylum without a second thought."

"All the same, I would prefer that you are not alone. As to the future, I still think you are mistaken about Dr Agar."

"Perhaps," said he absently. "Certainly if we prepare for the worst eventuality, we stand only to be pleasantly surprised when it does not come to pass. No, I would be more comfortable in my surroundings for the next few days. Even the condemned man gets one last meal of his choosing. And I shall be seeing you again the day after tomorrow. Would you have any objection if I book a table at Marcini's for Tuesday evening? I feel as if I shall be in need of one other gaudy night, as Shakespeare so ably put it. Therefore, we shall fill our bowls once more and mock the midnight bell! Well, I shall bid you farewell, Watson, for I see a steam launch ahead that is London-bound. Until Tuesday, my friend."

_**Continued in Chapter Four**_


	4. Chapter Four

_**A Case of Insanity**_

**Chapter Four**

It did not sit well with me that Holmes had chosen to disdain my offer and return to Baker Street. If I was honest, I was fully convinced that he had never intended to stay with me in Richmond at all and had agreed to do so only to circumvent any further discussion on the subject. Once I was safely installed in Surrey, he had then sprung his trap, knowing that I was powerless to prevent him going.

I could have been annoyed by this imperious behaviour. That I was not was tempered by our long association and the knowledge of what he had finally chosen to confide to me. Although I had said otherwise, I could not deny the possibility of what he feared; certainly I had been witness to enough in the past few months to make me realise that a less involved person would take the view that confinement was necessary for his safety as well as that of everyone else around him.

That may well have been advisable for a normal person suffering derangement of the nerves. But Holmes, at the best of times, was far from conforming to what might be considered the normal patterns of behaviour. What I accepted as his usual habits and eccentricities might be viewed very differently by an outsider. His bouts of depression, starvation, obsession, insomnia and flashes of temper would all be seen in a very different light, and treated accordingly.

The implications of that were appalling. In attempting to restore him to what they considered a 'normal' existence, his doctors would either have to admit defeat and keep him confined for years or would succeed in destroying that uniqueness of vision which had served to distinguish him in his particular field. I had an image of him being returned to me broken in mind, body and soul, an unrecognisable ruin of the friend and noble spirit I had once known.

It was not an idle fancy. The loss of control for Holmes would be devastating. For someone who would not permit his most intimate acquaintance the courtesy of agreeing to the simplest and well-meant of requests, the prospect of submitting himself utterly to the direction of a stranger would be unthinkable. He would rail against it, and his doctors, being neither as sympathetic or understanding as I, would take appropriate action. The circle would repeat itself until the most delicate part of the chain broke. Then what – long hours of silence with little to fill one's day but simple crafts and tasks for amusement? If that thought sent shivers down my spine, then I could only imagine the effect it would have on my restless friend.

It seemed to me that an alternative must be found. I had never heard of anyone dying from stagnation of the mind – and I had no intention of allowing Holmes to be the first. If he could be tended at home, I would see to it. If travel was recommended, I would accompany him. I did not believe for one moment that he was beyond redemption, as he had said; if he was, however, I had no intention of abandoning him to a torment of isolation, drugged stupors and cold baths.

My first thought was to abandon our proposed appointment with Dr Agar on the Wednesday, but I discounted that idea. I could not pretend that the situation was not worsening or that Holmes was correct in thinking his condition would right itself in its own time. I turned my thoughts instead to the root cause – the poisonous vapours of _Radix pedis diaboli_.

That the plant was largely unknown outside Europe was discouraging. Dr Sterndale had told us in no uncertain terms that knowledge of its properties had yet to find its way either into the pharmacopoeia or into the literature of toxicology. On the basis that such alkaline poisons may share features in common with others similar in composition, on the Monday morning I took myself across the Thames to Kew Gardens, that great repository of all things botanical.

I had a long and earnest discussion with one of the head gardeners about plants liable to cause delirium, such as mandrake, henbane and datura, and the dangers of prolonged exposure. He spoke of the unfortunate effects of certain of the fungi family and the potentially lethal consequences of misidentification whilst foraging. He enthused about the purple-blue flowers of Devil's-Bit, _Succisia pratensis_, and the toxic properties of Devil's-Backbone. But on Devil's-foot root, he could shed no light. He bitterly regretted his ignorance on the subject and added that if I could obtain a specimen for the collection, he would be most grateful.

With another avenue of investigation closed, it was in a dark frame of mind that I returned to Baker Street the following day. The London train was filled to capacity with those heading to the capital to celebrate the Jubilee and hopeful of catching a glimpse of the Queen. I found myself a seat in a crowded compartment between a rotund woman with a child perched on both knees and an elderly clergyman who smelt rather overpoweringly of mothballs. Both were pleased when I took out my newspaper for I became aware that they were reading over my shoulders.

News of the Jubilee celebrations and advice on where to obtain the best views were foremost, to the exclusion of all else. If one believed what one read in the papers, nothing else had happened in the preceding week. Obituaries had been forced to the back pages, grudgingly included as though the editor felt that the deceased had shown a lamentable lack of consideration by dying at so newsworthy a time. Hearings at the police courts were dealt with in a single paragraph and at the bottom of page five, a few lines served to enlighten readers that Scotland Yard had yet to make any progress in the case of Lady Bosham's stolen jewels.

"Still no arrests, I see," snorted the clergyman in my ear, his eyes still trained on this brief account.

"Apparently not," I replied.

"I don't know why they don't arrest that stepson of hers," said the woman to my right. "It's as clear as day that he's the only one who could have done it."

The case, as readers may recall, was an unusual one and I had harboured futile hopes that it was of sufficient interest to rouse Holmes's attention. Jewels to the value of sixty thousand pounds, including the famed Bosham diamond, had been taken from a house in Mayfair in the dead of night by a burglar who left no trace and had allegedly achieved that rare talent of walking through walls and reaching into locked safes. Only Lady Bosham and her stepson, the Hon. Henry Devis, had been in residence at the time, and neither had heard anything. The papers, in their usual fashion, had already dubbed the burglary as being the work of the 'The Mayfair Phantom'.

"One must assume," opined the clergyman, "that since Devis still has his liberty, that the police do not have grounds for a charge."

"If it was only him and the old lady in the house, then who else could it have been?" said the woman. "Her ladyship would have hardly stolen her own jewels, would she?"

Thereafter, I found myself in the midst of a discussion without being a part of it. Normally, conversation with one's fellow passengers is a rarity, but days of national celebration have a way of blurring the usual boundaries. People who would not usually pass the time of day find themselves thrown into close proximity, and the spirit of courage in the face of adversity and enforced confinement is liable to produce a more convivial mood for travel than might typically be expected.

Tomorrow, all would return to normal, and the clergyman and the child-festooned woman would be passing strangers once again. For now, however, both were keen to express their opinions and soon the case was the talk of our compartment. As we were pulling into the station, one gentleman concluded the debate by saying that the matter should be laid before Mr Sherlock Holmes, who was, in his opinion, the only man in London capable of solving the mystery of the phantom thief.

Had I been of a mind to appreciate the irony of that statement, I should have surely smiled. As it was, I could think only that Holmes in his present state was as far from being capable of shedding light on the problems of others as he was of mastering his own condition. I tried to tell myself that the day would come when he would once more live up to the expectations of the public and that I would have that rare pleasure of accompanying him as he did so, but the thought nagged at the back of my mind that I was deceiving myself. I feared for him, as I feared for myself faced with the prospect of witnessing the destruction of a friend.

So it was that with a heavy heart I made my way to Baker Street. Every cab was employed in ferrying people into the City, and after giving my up ride for the fourth time to a person more in need of transport, I set out on foot. By the time I arrived, I had quite convinced myself that placing Holmes in the hands of professionals was the wrong course of action. It went against every medical instinct I possessed, and yet that part of me that had come to know his character as intimately as he would allow knew that the outcome would surely be disastrous. I anticipated no resistance to my change of mind and my conscience eased – until that moment I saw Mrs Hudson waiting for me on the doorstep.

Her news was grave. "Mr Holmes came home on Sunday evening in something of a state," said she. "He locked himself in his room and I haven't seen hide nor hair of him since. I've been leaving his food outside his door because he won't let me in, but he won't touch it. I'm sore worried about him, Doctor, I can tell you."

I was not comforted by this report. Holmes had been in a depressed state of mind when we had parted and it appeared that his condition had deteriorated.

"And the talking, sir, you should have heard him, all night long," she went on.

"Talking? To whom?"

Mrs Hudson shrugged apologetically. "I'm sure I couldn't say, Doctor, because he's had no visitors and there's no one up there. Last night was the worst," she confided. "I could hear him walking up and down and having a terrible argument with someone. Then he was laughing and shouting as though he was as pleased as punch."

"And today?"

Her gaze turned to the first floor window above us. "Not a word, sir. Quiet as the grave it's been all morning. I find that's more worrying than when he's making a racket. It always makes me wonder what mischief he's getting up to."

That was a sentiment with which I could sympathise. "I shall see to him, Mrs Hudson, have no fear," I said, trying to be as reassuring as possible. "Are you going to the Jubilee celebrations?"

"I was meant to be meeting my niece who's come down from Newcastle for the day," she said uncertainly. "But I didn't like to leave the house and Mr Holmes alone. I'll not go now if you need me, sir."

"Of course you must go," I urged her. "We can't have you disappointing your niece."

"Well, if you're sure."

Given the uncertainty of what awaited me upstairs, I was keen to have Mrs Hudson leave in case the situation proved distressing. From her hesitation, I sensed that she too expected the worst and it took all my powers of encouragement to persuade her to leave. When at last she did, I took myself up to the room which had proved the starting point for so many of Holmes's cases and found myself confronted by a locked door. I rapped gently and a hoarse cry sounded from inside, demanding to know my identity.

"Holmes, it's me," I called back. "Open this door this instant."

The key rattled in the lock and the door creaked back on its hinges. I started inside – and felt the cold metal of a gun barrel pressed to my temple. The hissed command that I was not to move was superfluous; the prospect of a bullet through one's brains has a habit of transfixing one to the spot.

"Did you think you could inveigle your way in here on so flimsy an excuse?" Holmes hissed. "Hah! I have you now, you villain! Come to rob me, have you? Well, sir, an Englishman's home is still his castle, and I would be quite within my rights to shoot you where you stand as a common burglar!"

"Holmes, for goodness sake," I began.

"Silence! I shall not suffer you to speak unless I allow it. Now, sir, who sent you? Was it Professor Bennett?"

The pressure against my temple increased as my hesitation provoked his irritation. I could not see him, for he was slightly behind me and to my left, with his back against the wall while I was stranded just inside the darkened room. I did not need to see his face, however, to know that he was deadly serious.

His tone was all vehemence and his conviction utter. Whatever had happened in the preceding days seemed to have robbed him of his reason, even of the memory of me. One way or another, I was going to have to give him an answer; whether it was the right one would soon make itself obvious, and I hoped not fatally so.

"Holmes, it's me, Watson," I said, trying to keep the edge from my voice. "Put the gun down."

The barrel was indeed ground harshly into the side of my head. "A poor disguise, very ill indeed," said he tersely. "Did your perfidious master not tell you with whom you are dealing? Did you expect that I would be fooled so easily? I see through your designs and devices, and I am not deceived. You and your master have erred, my friend. Watson is not due here until Tuesday."

"It _is_ Tuesday."

"You think I do not know what day it is? You are a full day early. It is Monday."

"No, Holmes, I promise you it is Tuesday, 22nd June, the day of the Queen's Jubilee. Look at my paper if you do not believe me."

He spared it a passing glance. "A forgery," he declared.

"My train ticket then."

"Imitated."

"My cigarette case, it has my name on it."

"Stolen."

"The vesta case you gave me last Christmas."

"Copied."

I was beginning to tire of this conversation. "Then for pity's sake, what would convince you?"

He considered. "The case of the Repentant Vegetarian," said he firmly. "Tell me the details, and mind that you do not leave anything out. Your very life depends upon it."

I was sure that my heart skipped a beat. Of all the cases we had shared, he had chosen one that his fevered brain had invented.

I swallowed heavily, fully expecting that my next words would be my last. "I cannot," I replied. "Because there was no such case."

The next I knew, the gun had been swiftly removed from my head and I was dragged by the arm down behind the sofa. For the first time, I caught sight of his wild eyes, high colour and the gleaming perspiration on his forehead, and I counted myself fortunate to have escaped with my life.

"Well met, old fellow, well met," he whispered, keeping his iron grip on my arm. "Forgive the smoke and mirrors but I had to be sure, I had to be sure, you see. Only Watson would know there was no Repentant Vegetarian. No, none at all! You do see, my boy?"

I nodded vaguely, more concerned by the strange ferocity of his speech than what he was saying. I was uneasier still that he retained possession of his pistol; given the unpredictability of his mood, I was fully expecting to find it once again aimed in my direction.

"Good to have you here," he went on over-enthusiastically. "It is always vital to have the assistance of a brother in arms, just as in the old days. Good old Watson, he never lets me down. Have you brought your old service revolver? We shall need it, for I do not see how a confrontation with the blackguards may be avoided. But we are prepared. We shall counter their every assault!"

"Whose assault?" I asked, humouring him in the hope of distracting his attention from the weapon.

"Them!" he hissed, gesturing with his pistol in the direction of the window. "No, stay down. They are keeping close watch on these rooms and those blinds are no deterrent. They saw you enter no doubt. Or did you climb over the wall? Yes, yes, you must have done. That mud on your shoes speaks of adventures, my dear fellow. Were you followed?"

"I don't think so, Holmes."

"Did you see anyone?"

"No. Most people have gone to see the celebrations."

He snorted viciously. "Ah, there you see the artfulness of their plan. This day was made for thievery, Watson! While the populace carouses, their homes will be robbed. Why do you think Mycroft remains at the Diogenes? My brother is the sentinel of the club. Should they be invaded, he will drop from a great height onto the burglars and foil their plans. Yes, I too am prepared. Let the populace be lured away by the promise of petty entertainments, but I shall remain, besieged in my own home!"

"Why are you besieged?"

"Because they know! Because I have discovered the _truth_!"

As he spoke, he winced, as though struck by some great pain. The hand that had held my arm now went to his head and trembled as it probed the near translucent skin at his temples. A deep breath went some way to relieving his discomfort and swept away a little of the vehemence from his eyes when he next looked up at me.

"Would that you had been here, my friend," said he, his voice quieter now. "You would have revelled in the moment, as I did. It was so gloriously elementary in nature that a child could have deduced it. Mine eyes were dazzled by the light of revelation. Have I been so blind? Did _you_ see it?"

"See what, Holmes?"

"The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative!" he exclaimed. "How did I miss it?"

With such a cry, his body suddenly went limp and he near collapsed onto me. I caught him, found a pillow for his head and gently lowered him to the ground. I had time to feel his febrile forehead and the rapid fluttering of his pulse before my hand was enclosed in a vice-like grip. The gun clattered from his grasp to the floor, forgotten now, and I stowed it out of harm's way in my pocket. In the silence that followed, he held onto me like a frightened child, and I, in my ignorance, did not know what to do to ease his sufferings.

"I have supp'd full with horrors these last few days," he murmured. "I have found myself bereft of your light, my dear friend. Perpetual night has fallen across this place in your absence. Man was born to fear that darkness and the twilight that heralds it. I am my own dungeon, as Milton tells us, hiding a dark soul and foul, _foul_ thoughts. I had thought I was abandoned."

"Never, Holmes, you should know that."

"I do, but they told me, Watson, mocked me and laughed at me and told me you would not come."

"And you believed them? You had only to send word."

"I could not leave this house!" he insisted. "They were waiting, Watson. They still wait."

"For what, Holmes? To whom do you refer?"

"Professor Bennett and his cronies. I have in my grasp the final piece of evidence to prove the Cornish-Chaldean connection, and they would take it from me. Oh, they shall not. They shall have to prise it from my cold, dead fingers before I ever give it up. But I am so tired, Watson. I need to sleep."

"Of course you do."

"Yet if I do, they will come. You must help me. You are the only person I trust." From the depths of his dressing gown, he drew out a hefty, bound manuscript and pressed it into my hands. "My life's work," he said. "The fruit of my endeavours. I entrust it to you. Take it to Scotland Yard. Tell them what has transpired here, that my life is threatened and that this work contains the key."

"Holmes, I would rather stay here with you."

He shook his head. "Let them kill me, I care not. But I would not have your blood on my conscience. Go, Watson, while you still can, before night falls. Help may yet arrive in time. I shall lock the door, and open to none but you."

With strength I should not have thought him capable, he staggered to his feet and hauled me over to the door.

"Do not fail me," said he, and then with a smile, added: "No, I forget. My Watson has never failed me. I need hardly remind you of the dangers we face. That Dartmoor mist, my friend, it will not rise up and take us unawares this time. Guard that manuscript with your life. Godspeed, my friend. I await your return."

The door slammed in my face and the key turned in the lock. I stood there for what felt like an eternity, unsure what to do for the best. I had listened to insane ravings and wild rambling talk about murderous professors of language and burglars, borne of a festering obsession with the roots of an extinct dialect. I cursed myself for not insisting that he remained with me in Richmond; something had transpired on his return, something which had tipped the balance of his mind. The collapse, which had occurred in so short a time, was absolute.

I could not deceive myself into thinking now that his condition could be contained. When he was unable to recognise his friends and had threatened me with a gun, I knew that the situation was out of my hands. It was not a responsibility I could take solely on myself, and my thoughts naturally turned his brother. What would I tell him? The charge of insanity must surely seem fantastic based on the deluded importance he placed on the theory contained in the manuscript I held.

Holmes had spoken of it as 'containing the key'. Out of interest, I turned to the first page to find two words inscribed in large letters: '_ud rocashaas_'. It meant nothing to me, and I supposed it formed the basis of his theories. I was less certain when I found the same phrase repeated on the next ten pages. Thereafter, the pages were blank.

It seemed the decision had been made for me. One of the most remarkable minds of his generation was disintegrating before my very eyes, and I saw no cause to believe that the decay was either treatable or reversible. I left him that day certain in the knowledge that the bright soul who had shed light into the darkest of mysteries and brought hope to the despondent had gone forever. My grief was already inconsolable. But I should not have gone to Mycroft Holmes.

_**Continued in Chapter Five**_


	5. Chapter Five

_**A Case of Insanity**_

**Chapter Five**

"I take it that this is not a social call, Doctor?"

Mycroft Holmes, standing in the bow window of the Stranger's Room, continued his surveillance of the street below, his expression caught between distaste and apprehension. I had guessed correctly when I had presumed to ask for him at his club; even on so momentous a day, I would have been have surprised to find him mingling with the jovial masses. That he had deduced the nature of my visit was to be expected, although I would have preferred that his reasoning had carried him further so that the lot of harbinger of ill tidings did not solely fall to me.

"No, Mr Holmes," I replied. "I am here on a matter of some importance."

Still gazing from the window, Mycroft Holmes nodded sagely. "My brother is ill, then?"

This did make me start. "You know?"

He favoured me with a cursory glance. "Not at all, I assure you. However, since you are here, on this of all days, when the rest of the country seems to have descended on this quiet corner of London to create havoc beneath my window, and you are alone, I must assume that my brother is indisposed, possibly seriously, since you have seen fit to do battle with the crowds and seek me out. Ah, but here they come, at last. Doctor, would you be so kind as to ring the bell? Ross expressed a desire to see the Queen, and as he was good enough to forgo his holiday to stay on today, one does not like to disappoint."

I did as he asked and then joined him at the window. Pall Mall was thronging with people, in places standing some forty deep along the route that the royal procession was to take. It was a day blessed with brilliant sunshine, and the gaudy hues of the hats and ribbons of the ladies and children added bright rivers of colour to the otherwise monotone street. In the distance, making their way slowly from the direction of Westminster, I glimpsed the first of the mounted guards, making their way slowly between the attendant ranks of soldiers and sailors.

"We have a fine view, do we not?" remarked Mycroft Holmes. "Personally, I cannot abide a crowd, but I dare say there are worse places to be today than here behind the safety of glass and four solid walls. Ah, Ross, just in time. Do come and join us."

Together, we three watched as the procession wended its way down Pall Mall towards Trafalgar Square. After the Queen, seated regally in an open carriage, pulled by an eight-strong team of greys, came the mounted dignitaries, the Horse Guards and a following of the senior members of the army and navy. Somewhere a band played, their efforts being drowned out by the mighty roar and hurrahs of the crowd. Flags waved, men doffed their caps and Ross, the Diogenes club's elderly valet, wiped a tear from his eye and offered a fervent 'God save Her Majesty'. When the last had moved away towards the National Gallery, Mycroft Holmes sighed with satisfaction and subsided into the nearest armchair.

"Thank goodness that is over for another ten years," said he, after Ross had gone in search of tea for us both. "Well, now, Dr Watson, you were telling me about my brother. Is he dying, or does he simply believe himself to be so? If the former, then there is very little I can do; if the latter, then the same applies."

"I fear the matter is a delicate one," I began. "Have you seen your brother of late?"

Mycroft Holmes helped himself to a liberal pinch of snuff and brushed away the clinging remnants that had fallen onto the lapel of his coat with a brisk sweep of his hand. "I saw him Sunday afternoon last, as it happens."

"How did he seem to you?"

"Agitated, which even by Sherlock's standards seemed more excessive than usual. He was rambling, as I recall. Said he had been in Richmond all day and that there was something he had to tell me. I had to remind him to keep his voice down; even in here, the noise does carry. Then, just before he left, he became very excited and kept muttering something about a voiceless alveolar lateral fricassee, whatever that is."

"Fricative," I corrected him. "Yes, he mentioned something similar to me."

His keen gaze came to rest on me. "Am I supposed to infer some significance from this curious remark of his?"

"It's something he's been working on, the roots of the Cornish language."

"Interesting, but why should that concern me?"

I passed across the manuscript that Holmes had entrusted to my care. His brother flicked through the first few pages and a frown settled on his brow.

" '_Ud rocashaas_'," he read aloud. "What the devil does it mean?"

"I have no idea. Your brother said it was the 'key'. He says this manuscript is his _magnum opus_. He asked me to deliver it into the hands of Scotland Yard for safe-keeping because he believes…" I had to force myself to continue. "He believes that an Oxford don wishes to prevent him from publishing his theories, by murder if necessary."

"The academic world has always taken their scholarship most seriously, but that seems a little extreme even by Oxford's standards." Mycroft Holmes set down the manuscript and regarded me gravely. "If I understand you correctly, Dr Watson, are you trying to tell me that my brother has lost his mind?"

His frankness took me aback. "I should not have put it quite like that."

"Now, sir, let us be honest with each other. Sane men do not compile manuscripts of blank pages and abstract phrases, and then claim that their lives are threatened because of it. May we agree upon that point? Good. Then all that remains is for you to tell me the extent of the problem, and we may act accordingly."

Long experience has to some extent inured me to the more eccentric of the family's behaviour, but this so calm a reaction in the face of what others would consider the worst of revelations had left me bemused.

"Forgive me for saying so, Mr Holmes," said I, "but you do not seem surprised."

A benign smile settled on his fleshy features. "Nor am I, for I have had a suspicion for some time that all has not been well with him. I first noticed it when he was away on his 'travels'. I remember receiving some very strange messages from him. I was glad he decided to return when he did; had he dallied any longer I feel sure he would have become quite unbalanced, more so than already. Did you not notice the change in him?"

"In some ways."

He chuckled. "Dr Watson, you are too polite, sir. I am never offended by honesty and offer that same courtesy to my acquaintances, which is why I choose to share the unhappy circumstances of my family with you. Whosoever claimed that there is no genius free from some tincture of madness was, in the case of our forebears, very near to the truth. Sherlock flatters himself by attributing it to an artistic temperament; I say it is nothing more than congenital insanity. It is a sad fact that more Holmeses have ended their days talking to trees or believing they were the descendants of King Arthur than have died happily in their beds in full possession of their faculties. So, no, this news comes as no great shock to me. For how long do you judge has he been affected?"

"Some months. His health was in such poor state in March that on the advice of Dr Moore Agar of Harley Street we took a short holiday in Cornwall in the hope that it would prove beneficial."

"He consulted a specialist? That does surprise me."

"At my urging."

"Ah, quite so. I should not expect my brother to be so bold without encouragement. And this holiday failed to resolve the problem?"

I saw that I would have to be candid with him and give an account of the case and the circumstances that had exacerbated the crisis. As I did so, his expression grew ever darker and his eyes took on a gleam of growing disbelief that hardened into disapproval until they shone like polished steel.

"Unforgiveable," said he with asperity. "When one knows one has a weakness, one does not encourage it by playing with fire. I would say that he has no one to blame but himself!"

When I suggested that the fault was partly mine in not preventing his excesses, he shook his head.

"My brother is of the same stubborn nature as old King Canute, who believed he could command the ocean waves. Once Sherlock sets his mind to something, then no power on earth will stand in his way. From what you have told me, it is only by your timely intervention that he has any sanity remaining at all. You may date his condition from this misadventure, Doctor, but I say that to countenance such a foolhardy experiment at all is proof of an already weakening nature. Do you believe his faculties to be deteriorating?"

I was growing increasingly uneasy about our conversation. The picture I was painting of Holmes's mental state was troubling. I remembered too what he had said on Sunday about his brother, of his apprehension at having to tell him of his condition. As ruthless as the old Tudor monarchs was how he had described him, operating from a position of pure logic that permitted little room for sentiment.

I saw it now in the determined set of his brow and the stern look in his eye. While I hesitated, Holmes's words drifted back to me: _"If he considered it expedient, I dare say he would have me carted off to the nearest asylum without a second thought."_ That I should collude in condemning him to such a fate troubled my conscience more than I could say.

"Your loyalty to my brother does you credit," Mycroft Holmes remarked, having noted my reticence. "However, you have come to me because you are a man of wisdom and know that that the situation cannot be allowed to continue unchecked. Something has occurred this day that has given you greater cause for concern. Is that not so?"

"Yes, it has."

"Very well, I shall not press the issue. But I must deal with practicalities. As much as it grieves me to hear that my brother has succumbed, whether through his own foolishness or not, certain facts must now be faced. Whatever the truth of his condition, if he is even only slightly compromised, understand me, sir, that I cannot permit this to become general knowledge. He has been a servant of the state on more than one occasion; that alone is enough to worry certain members of the government should word of this reach their ears. They will take steps to ensure that he does not become an embarrassment if I do not."

"Surely not—"

"That is the price we pay, Dr Watson, and the consequences we accept. Nor will you have forgotten that the strength of his testimony has secured the conviction of many a criminal. If one shadow of doubt is cast upon the soundness of his judgement, I need not tell you of the repercussions. That is the reality of the situation; the remedy, as objectionable as you may find it, is essential for the preservation of my brother's reputation. We must not permit undue attachments or emotion to dissuade us from the proper course of action. _Sine ira et studio_; thus we make our decision."

"Even so, Mr Holmes, what you suggest, it must surely be the death of him."

He gave a slow, considered nod of his head. "I concede the possibility, but I see no alternative."

"Perhaps I am being too hasty," I said. "If you saw him for yourself—"

"I have dwelt so long amongst the idiosyncrasies of bureaucrats and politicians that I fear I would not recognise insanity even if it was stood before me. I am more than prepared to accept yours as the final word on the matter. However, if a second opinion would satisfy you, then that is what we shall have."

The valet had returned with a tray and began to lay the table for tea.

"Has Dr Rochdale returned to the club, do you know, Ross?" he asked.

"Why, yes, sir, I saw him not five minutes ago."

"Excellent. Would you be so kind as to ask him to step this way for few minutes? I wish to see him."

The valet bowed and departed. Mycroft Holmes picked up his cup and took a tentative sip.

"We are fortunate here at the Diogenes," said he, grimacing as the tea burned his upper lip, "in having a number of men as members who are considered as being pre-eminent in their professions. Dr Rochdale is something of an expert in the classification, diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. I understand he is also the director of a small private asylum somewhere in Kent. An agreeable enough man, though quite adverse to the company of his fellows. I have often found that when one studies human nature, one is liable to become repelled by it."

"Might it not be wiser to consult the doctor Holmes saw before, Dr Agar?"

"I am not familiar with the name. No doubt he is competent enough, but is he discreet? In such cases, and that of my brother in particular, that is of paramount important. Rochdale I know I can trust – he was most understanding when one of our older members went peculiar last year. The fellow is quite recovered now and we never refer to the incident."

The door opened to admit a spare, bespectacled man of fifty, with a large, intellectual head, sunken cheeks and warm, intelligent brown eyes.

"Dr Rochdale, do come in, sir," Mycroft Holmes said affably. "Dr Watson, Dr Rochdale. Yes, do take a seat, Doctor. You are a busy man, so I will not waste your valuable time. It is in your professional capacity that we wish to speak to you."

"Certainly, Mr Holmes, if I may be of any assistance."

"My friend here, Dr Watson, has a patient, who is giving him cause for concern."

"Ah," said Rochdale, with understanding nod. "I see. This patient of yours, Doctor, male or female?"

"Male," I answered.

"Age?"

"Forty-three," Mycroft Holmes grunted.

Rochdale smiled tolerantly at me. "What is it about this patient that concerns you, sir?"

"I hardly know where to begin," I admitted.

"Then let us start with a definition of terms. The foremost symptom of mental deterioration is the failure of the capacity of judgement and loss of self-control. Does your patient exhibit such tendencies?"

"His judgement is certainly impaired," spoke up Mycroft Holmes. "He has formed an unreasonable obsession with Cornish and claims he has created what will be the last word on the subject." He passed across the manuscript. "What is your opinion of that?"

Rochdale leafed through the pages. "A most curious document. He gave you this?"

"For safe-keeping," I replied.

"He believes it warrants the protection of the police," interjected Mycroft Holmes. "He further claims that the academic world will stop at nothing to stop him publishing this 'masterpiece' of his."

"From what you describe," said Rochdale, "it sounds as though the patient is suffering from manias of persecution and paranoia. Is he delusional?"

"Occasionally," I said. "He was suffering from lapses of memory. It gave him cause to question his judgement."

"Ah, then he does have awareness of his condition?"

"Well, yes, he did, at least until today."

The doctor gave me a sharp look. "You mean his mental state has deteriorated?"

I nodded. "When I saw him earlier, initially, he did not recognise me."

"How did you resolve this problem?"

"I had to prove my identity."

"Before he would admit you into his presence?"

Again, that feeling of disquiet was sinking its teeth into my soul. "Not exactly. He had a gun to my head."

"Good grief!" exclaimed Mycroft Holmes, making his cup rattle in the saucer as he placed both with a resounding thud on the table. "You did not mention this before, Dr Watson. This is grievous news indeed. That he would threaten you speaks of the depths of his mental confusion. Do you not agree that is a most serious case, Dr Rochdale?"

The doctor's expression was strained. "Tell me, Dr Watson, do you believe he would have shot you if you had not satisfied him as to your identity? This is most important."

In Rochdale's position, I too should have demanded candour. I knew what had passed through my mind in those tense moments. I knew I what I had _believed_ would have happened had he not been convinced. But I could not tell Rochdale that. The sense of betrayal was too great. He would have to make up his own mind on that point.

"I do not know," I said, shrugging in a gesture of futility. "He was agitated, and confused. The landlady reported that she had heard him talking out loud, and he has said that voices have told him things. I know that he has not been eating or sleeping. Indeed, he has confided to me that he is _afraid_ to sleep."

I described Holmes's dreams as he had related them to me and explained what I considered to have precipitated the crisis, passing off the episode with the Devil's-foot root in the vaguest of terms as temporary exposure to poisonous vapours.

Dr Rochdale scratched thoughtfully at his neat beard. "Further examination would be necessary, but from your description, Doctor, it sounds as though your patient is suffering from a type of delusional degenerative disease. This violent strain in him concerns me most of all. It may be that you could become the focus of a scheme of revenge, planned against those agencies which he believes are pursuing him."

"That must be avoided at all costs," said Mycroft Holmes. "What do you advise, sir?"

"Confinement. The patient clearly represents a risk to both himself and society. The family must be persuaded on this point."

"They are. Would you take such a patient at your establishment, Doctor?"

"Without question."

"Then make the arrangements."

Rochdale looked confused. "Forgive me, am I to understand that the patient is—"

"My younger brother, Mr Sherlock Holmes. Dr Watson was good enough to bring this to my attention, although he omitted certain details of which I have only now been informed. Had I known sooner, there would have been no hesitation on my part."

"You have my condolences," said Rochdale sincerely. "I am of course familiar with your brother's name and reputation. This is sad news indeed." He paused to run his tongue over his dry lips. "I feel it is only fair to warn you that his condition may prove incurable. We can make him comfortable, but as such no treatment has yet proved effective in influencing the course of such a disease."

Mycroft Holmes sighed heavily. "It is as well to know these things in advance. Very well, Dr Rochdale, you have my permission to admit my brother."

"I shall make the necessary arrangements, Mr Holmes," said Rochdale. "There are, however, certain legal requirements."

"Judge Fullerton is a member here. I shall have a quiet word with him about obtaining the necessary documentation. This cannot go before the courts. I must insist on absolute secrecy. Nor must anyone know my brother's identity. Admit him, by all means, but let it be under an alias. Is that understood?"

Rochdale glanced at us both uneasily. I too had my reservations, even if I could appreciate the reasoning behind it. Stripped of his name, that distinctiveness which separated him from the mass of other men, his mental distress would surely deepen.

"What name then?"

"Watson," I said on impulse.

"That is most generous, Doctor," said Mycroft Holmes. "You do not mind?"

"Not in the least. That way, no one will question my visiting a sick relation."

"Sound reasoning. Then Watson it is. How soon can you take him, Dr Rochdale?"

"Within the hour. From what you have said of his violent tendencies, am I permitted to call upon the assistance of the police? I have often found it expedient in such cases."

"No. The fewer people know about my unfortunate brother's condition, the better."

"Then how are we to gain access to the patient? To subdue him, if necessary?"

I had an awful vision of my friend being hauled bodily from the house, robbed of all dignity and an object of ghoulish interest for the other residents of Baker Street. If it had to be done, I saw that I owed it to Holmes, for the sake of all we had shared, to make the transition as painless as possible, whatever the cost to myself.

His brother had evidently come to the same conclusion, for when I looked up, I found that his eyes were upon me and tinged with such a sense of resignation that I was left in no doubt what he was about to say.

"I know you to be a man of deep moral principles," said he, "and I would not ask this if it were not necessary. Even in his state of mental disarray, I know Sherlock will struggle and fight, and cause as much grief to all concerned as possible. We can spare him that."

"You wish me to give him a sedative?"

"He trusts you."

"Yes, I know. That makes what you ask all the more difficult."

"The alternative is worse. However, if you would prefer another—"

I shook my head. "No, I can do that much for him."

Dr Rochdale got to his feet. "I shall be round at Baker Street in the hour," said he, shaking both our hands. "Unhappy times, gentleman. Good day to you both, for now."

With the matter decided, I had the strongest urge to escape the confines of the club and return without delay to our rooms. "You never know, he might have improved in my absence," I said with a mirthless laugh as I gathered my things to leave.

Still in his window-side chair, Mycroft Holmes smiled half-heartedly, the yellowing light of the fading afternoon failing to disguise the pallor of his countenance. "We may hope, Dr Watson," said he. "There is no harm in that. But to deceive ourselves, well, that would be surely the unkindest cut of all. Do what you can for him. If any spark remains, kindle it. If not, then we must accept what we cannot change, for the sake of all concerned."

_**Continued in Chapter Six**_


	6. Chapter Six

_**A Case of Insanity**_

**Chapter Six**

The crowds had begun to disperse by the time I left the club, although not quickly enough for my liking. I found my way blocked by dawdling women and grinning children. A drunken porter, who had started his celebrations earlier, threw an arm around my shoulder and told me I was his best friend. Finally free of the beer-soaked fellow, I turned into a side road and straight into the path of a constable with an imperious expression on his face and wanting to know why I was not joining the rest of the populace in heading over to St Paul's Cathedral for the finale of the day, the Service of Thanksgiving.

He took some convincing that I was a doctor on my way to see a patient, but did at last finally let me go, announcing as he did so that it all seemed rather rum to him that anyone would take ill when the sun was shining. I did not stay to debate the issue; I had already suffered enough delays and time was not on my side. The hands of my watch were eating away at the hour I had to attempt some rehabilitation of an ailing mind before Dr Rochdale came to take Holmes into his care.

I ran the length of Baker Street as fast as the twinges in my leg would allow and arrived home with half an hour to spare. Mrs Hudson had yet to return, a fact of which I was glad, for if it came to the worst, it would have distressed her greatly to see her tenant taken ignominiously from the house.

All was quiet when I let myself in. As I had no wish to have a repeat of our earlier encounter, I called up the stairs to alert Holmes to my presence.

The blood smear on the leaf of the aspidistra that stood on the landing table was my first warning that all was not well. Still glistening, I could follow its trail along the wall and beyond the closed door. It was unlocked, but the knob slid in my hand, coating my palm red. My heart was thudding in my chest as I used my handkerchief to get a firmer grip and pushed the door wide.

A scene of devastation met my eyes. The books had been torn from the shelves in a frenzy of excitement and every file, folder and journal turned out onto the floor. The drawers of the tallboy teetered on the edge of falling, so far had they been pulled out and Holmes's desk, not tidy at the best of times, was a confusion of blotches where the ink well had been overturned and its contents allowed to spill out over the blotter and a strewn collection of cuttings. At the heart of this turmoil, sitting in the chair beside the fire, sat Holmes, knee-deep in a mass of newspapers that had accumulated around his legs and staring listlessly at his trembling hands.

I approached warily, avoiding the red splashes on the papers underfoot that marked his passage across the room. From between his clenched fingers, drying rivulets of blood showed where the damage had been done. He did not acknowledge me nor say anything as I prised his fists open to find bleeding cuts on his palms and fingers, the wounds showing the glint of broken glass buried deep in the flesh. Relieved that it was not more serious, I went in search of a bowl and water, and returned to his side to find that he was as unresponsive as before.

"Holmes," I said gently, trying to rouse some spark of interest in him as I cleansed the gashes on his hands. "Can you tell me what happened?"

For the first time since I had entered the room, he slowly became aware that he was not alone. He seemed bewildered and I saw from the pained look that came into his eyes that he was struggling to make sense of what I was saying.

"Your hands," I urged. "How did you cut them?"

"Intruders," he murmured fiercely. "They came here. They took my manuscript." He pulled his hand abruptly away and a spray of bloody water soaked my trousers as he gestured about the room. "I've searched, everywhere. It's gone. Years and years of study, the work of half a lifetime. They've taken it from me."

"No, Holmes." I grabbed his waving hand and forced him to look at me. "You gave me the manuscript earlier. Don't you remember?"

His brow furrowed. "Gave it to you? Why?"

"You wanted me to take it to Scotland Yard."

"No, no, I never would. Fools and blunderers, I wouldn't entrust a loaf of bread to their safe-keeping."

"Yes, you did. It's safe, my friend."

With his free hand, he rubbed his eyes, unwittingly daubing his face with red smears. "Safe?" he grunted. "Who in this world is safe when a man may be molested in his own home? But how, _how_ did they gain entry? They took me entirely by surprise. Yes, a diversion, clever. Curse those dogs that howl and yap beneath my window! Then, when my back was turned, there, I saw them in my room."

I looked to where he pointed with shaking finger to see the broken remains of the cheval mirror. Jagged edges stood up from the frame like tiger's fangs, glinting with the blood where unwary fingers had been slashed by the razor edges when reaching for intruders who existed only in the tortured imagination of the beholder.

"Their cunning was extraordinary," he went on fervently. "They tried everything. I heard them first, outside my window, describing how they would force it to gain entry. I pulled the curtains; that stopped them. Then gas under my door to try to flush me out. An unexpected stroke, that – I was obliged to open the window. That's how they must have got in. But I soon put a stop to their game. I took up the poker and sent them scurrying away like mice back to their holes!"

I deeply dismayed by this violent and rising excitement and the sheer brutality of his speech, so far removed from his usual eloquence and ordered thinking. Had I not held him fast, he would have been up out of his chair and attacking the mirror again.

"Holmes, concentrate!" I said, forcing him back down. "There is no one there. There never was. You know this."

For all this wild talk and his emaciated state, his strength still proved to be the greater. He pushed me harshly away, and was up on his feet in an instant. Then about the room he began to prowl, glancing fiercely about the walls, as though he expected to find intruders secreted in every corner of the room.

"These people," he muttered, grinding his fist into his hand, "I knew them to be minions of Professor Bennett. Oh, he's a clever man and no mistaking. A genius, some might say the natural heir of his illustrious predecessor, Moriarty. The one has trained the other - yes, yes, I see his hand in this. How have I been so blind!"

"Holmes, Moriarty is dead."

He did not hear me, I am sure of it, for he was too wrapt in this rambling train of thought. "Now I come to think of it, the resemblance is too close to be mere coincidence. They are surely the same person. Hah! See the cunning, the workings of a criminal mastermind behind this scheme of his. He cannot be allowed to continue. He has the colleges under his control. All those students – willing and intelligent menials to his unbounded ambition! Without my manuscript, I am discredited and cannot move against him. As surely as night follows day, then must we say in this case – QED."

He clapped his hands in paroxysm of triumph, heedless of the blood from the reopened wounds that began to course down his fingers as he kept up his wanderings.

"And night, my dear fellow, that is the time we must fear. Or rather dusk and dawn, for despite mankind's best attempts, those remain our most vulnerable times. We must keep our lights on, that will keep them at bay, day and night, and drive them from our door."

Scurrying to the window, he let up the blinds. As they clattered upwards, he gasped and drew back in alarm.

"No, stay back," he commanded me. "Do not let them see you. One must admire their determination if not their ambition. They have regrouped and mustered their forces for yet another attack."

Although he would not permit my drawing any nearer, I could just make out the roof of a brougham in the street below. Dr Rochdale had arrived. My hour of grace was almost at an end.

"We must make preparations," said Holmes with decision. "Barricade the doors, block the windows. But, dear heavens, where is he? He should be back by now. He went… he went for…" He was struggling again. "Perhaps he has gone for good. I could not blame him. But no, of all men, I know he would never fail me, not Watson. Where can he be?"

Nothing could have sent a greater sorrow through my heart. I needed to hear that masterful confidence from him, that certainty when one could believe whatever the odds that somehow everything would turn out for the best. Instead, I was trying to reason with the unreasonable, a mind in the grip of deluded agitation. His brother had instructed me to look for some spark of the Sherlock Holmes of old. In his unfocused eyes, nervous manner and incomprehensible words, muttered either to himself or some unseen agent, I found none.

If there is nothing more deplorable than the ruin of a noble mind, then the greater sadness must belong to those forced to witness to such lamentable decay. The sufferer knows only the confusion of the present, a small mercy granted by an otherwise merciless illness. Friends and family, however, are left to witness the relentless march of slow decay and that exorcising of character and the very essence by which a man's nature might be known.

The dread which had been my constant companion during the early years of our association had returned to haunt me and manifested itself in this poor addled wretch before me now, unable to remember anything of the past and lost in a world of confusion. It had always appalled to me to think that some day I might be witness to the first signs of permanent damage, of a weakening in mind and the gradual loss of those powers by which he was distinguished.

We had gone over the arguments so many times that a single look had became enough to register my disapproval. We had had our battles, each fancying ourselves to have emerged victorious. In the final reckoning, however, we had both lost. All that remained was for me to fulfil the promise I had made to his brother.

"Would you have me look for him?" I asked. "Perhaps he has already returned."

"Watson would have come straight up if he had," Holmes murmured. "He is not here, of that I am sure. I know the sound of his foot upon the stair. Even so, the noise is so great that I may have been mistaken. No, you must remain in this room. It is a risk to leave with the forces of evil at large."

"Well worth it, if it would set your mind at rest." He was as meek as a lamb as I gently guided him back to his chair. "Wait for me here. I shall be back."

I went not to search for my missing self, but up to my room. There, from my medical bag, I collected what I needed and returned downstairs. In my absence, Holmes had armed himself with the poker and had it clutched tightly against his body as though expecting the assault to begin at any moment.

"Do you hear them?" he hissed. "Those dogs again! Will their howling never cease?"

Of course there was nothing to hear. Arguing with him would only cause further distress, so I kept my silence and, with my back to him, poured a measured dose of sedative into the brandy I had prepared.

"They are the warning of worse to come," he said insistently. "Yes, hell-hounds all, sent to worry at our throats. But we shall not be distracted. Not this time!"

I had one last moment of pause. I glanced across at Holmes, seeking, in vain I knew, for some remnant of his magnificent intellect. It is the nature of hope, to endure when all other certainties have been dashed, even when all indications point to the contrary. While I hesitated, fostering an indulgent fancy that it was not yet too late, from the street outside, I heard the clatter of hooves and the rattle of another approaching cab. I heard it halt and then came the murmur of voices. Most likely it was Dr Rochdale's assistants, arrived to take the patient away. Time had run out. If it had to be done, there was nothing to be gained in further delay.

"I cannot spare the time or energy to waste in adding superfluous fluids to my body," Holmes declared when I offered him the glass. "That is the nature of water, to dilute the concentrate. It is pure poison to the logical mind and I shall have none of it."

"Yet without it, how can you hope to withstand what the night may bring?"

He wavered. "I am a little thirsty, it is true."

I helped him raise it to his lips and held it there while he swallowed the concoction. A little of the fight seemed already to have gone out of him, as if capitulation on so minor a point had exhausted him. While he was quiet, I took the opportunity to re-dress his hands and waited for the sedative to take effect.

"Did you find him?" he asked absently.

"Who?"

"Watson, of course. Confound the man, what can be delaying him? I expect he's run into one of those acquaintances of his and I have been quite forgotten."

"He is on his way, I am sure of it."

"Yes, I dare say you are right. He is a good soul, if a little forgetful at times."

"I had not noticed."

"No? Well, it is the least of his faults and the most forgivable." He chuckled. "Do you know, there was a time… a time when he…"

"Go on," I urged. Suddenly it felt important to hear whatever it was he had remembered. "A time when he did what?"

He shook his head and struggled to stifle a yawn. "No, I cannot think. This tiredness will be the death of me. When he comes, I think I shall risk a few hours of sleep. Even now, I feel that if I could close my eyes for just a minute, all would be well."

His eyelids were indeed drifting down.

"Sleep if you must," I said. "I will keep watch."

"No, not until Watson gets here. Something I must say to him…"

I never learned what it was that he had to tell me. A long sigh carried away his final words. His head lolled and his grip on the poker relaxed. When I eased it from his hand, he did not try to stop me. All the same, I have been deceived by Holmes before and so I watched him for several minutes. After I was convinced his sleep was genuine, I went downstairs to admit the waiting Dr Rochdale.

_**Continued in Chapter Seven**_


	7. Chapter Seven

_A/N: This chapter has some serious __'ouch' moments. I haven't invented any of the facts – the hospital is based on a real asylum of the late Victorian period and the treatment described was recommended in medical texts of the time (specifically 1883 & 1911)._

* * *

_**A Case of Insanity**_

**Chapter Seven**

"_That he is mad, 'tis true; 'tis true 'tis pity;_

_And pity 'tis 'tis true."_

I could have wished for a happier choice of reading material than the _Literary Review's_ erudite examination of the mad scenes in _Hamlet _as my selection for the journey to Lullingfield Manor. I had enough on my conscience without the accusing voice of Shakespeare in my ear, telling me that _"madness in great ones must not unwatched go"_. The journal was set aside and I turned my attention to the sweeping fields of ripening corn as we sped across the border into Kent.

It had been four days since the Diamond Jubilee celebrations – or, in terms more personal, four days since I had witnessed Holmes's removal from Baker Street to a private asylum. I had not journeyed with him, on his brother's advice. Instead, I had watched the pair of broughams depart down the empty road, the only observers to this sad ending myself, Mycroft Holmes and old Mrs Johnson of 215, a permanent invalid whose window side seat was her only outlet on a world in which she could no longer participate.

Mindful of her perpetual vigil, I had taken the precaution of covering Holmes's head with a sheet to afford him some last dignity before the attendants carried him out into the street. All Mrs Johnson would have seen was a bundle of blankets hastened into the waiting cab. The blinds were snapped down and the grim procession set off without delay. Since then, I had heard only that Holmes was being well cared for and was undergoing a series of treatments.

To a seasoned medical man, such hazy terms conveyed very little. I told his brother of my intention to visit, which met with his approval, and come the Saturday, I caught the morning train and swapped city grime for the sweeter, grass-scented air of the countryside. I arrived at Lullingfield a little after eleven and, by way of the vicar's dogcart - it was my good fortune that he happened to be passing the station when I alighted - I soon found myself striding up the main drive of the Manor Hospital.

Unhappy circumstance has occasioned me to visit a number of asylums in my time, so that I thought I knew what to expect: regular red-bricked buildings, high walls, gates and bars, with an ever present accompaniment of assorted cries and murmurs from the residents. Lullingfield Manor, however, I could only describe as positively ducal. The house itself was a grand Palladian affair, inviting one to approach up a flight of steps and enter beneath the soaring pediment, as one might a Roman temple. Had I not known better, I should have imagined I was requesting entrance to the home of the highest in the land; the idyll was only spoilt when instead of a deferential butler to greet me, I was met by a dark-suited man with an air of suspicion who politely inquired my business and struggled to contain his surprise when I informed him that I was there to visit my unfortunate cousin.

I took no offence at his assumption that I had come to the wrong door. Indeed, dressed as I was in my best suit, I still felt decidedly shabby in the midst of such magnificent surroundings. Above me, painted gods wondered at my presence in such exalted company; even the caryatids of the fireplace seemed to gaze fixedly in my direction, watchful lest I was tempted to make off with the silver. I was an interloper in their world, elevated by circumstance from mere commoner to a pretence of wealth. I lacked Holmes's flair for disguise, and my feeble efforts were poor in comparison.

I was heartily glad when my inquisitor returned and informed me that Dr Gordon would be down shortly to take me through. In the meantime, the garden was at my disposal, his tone suggesting that I was making the place look untidy. I accepted his offer and escaped the disapproving stares of the satyrs and cherubs to step out into glaring sunlight.

For a moment, I fancied myself at a garden party. A liveried servant made his way serenely across the lawn bearing a silver platter. A lady wrapped in a shawl sat beneath a silk parasol in a gothic-style summerhouse. Peacocks sat atop a green pagoda and shrieked at each other across the expanse of the garden. A groom led a pair of bay hunters down the path to the stables, tipping his cap to a maid who was gathering herbs from the kitchen garden. Everywhere I looked, gentleman smoked or discussed the best year for port, while a cluster of ladies sat in the shade, toiling over a length of embroidery.

This sight, more than any, went some way to easing my sense of guilt. The patients, if indeed this collection of people were, seemed happy and contented. Music wafted to my ears from the open windows of the house; somewhere in the distance I caught the sound of leather against willow. It was enough to restore one's faith. If Holmes could be helped, even, dare I hoped, cured, one felt sure that this was the place where it would happen.

I took a turn about the garden, nodding to the patients and hoping all the while to catch a glimpse of my friend amongst the smiling faces. Not that I expected him to be smiling - one must not hope for miracles, after all - but the day was pleasant and the garden redolent with the scent of roses and honeysuckle. I savoured my surroundings, breathed in clean, wholesome air, listened to the idle chatter of the birds – and then dropped to the ground as the head was shot off a sunflower inches from where I stood.

As I lay prone on my back, a figure in country tweeds came to stand over me, a shotgun drooping from his arm. "You silly young puppy, didn't you hear me call out?" said he.

"I heard nothing," said I, regarding his smoking weapon warily.

"In a daydream, I suppose. Ah, well, no harm done."

He extended a hand and helped me to my feet. Upright and no longer blinded by the sun, I saw that he was elderly, grey of hair and whiskers, his face ruddy and weather-beaten, and his demeanour speaking of a military background.

"Brigadier James," said he, confirming my theory as he shook my hand briskly. "Medical chappy are you?"

"I am as a matter of fact."

"Thought so," said he, tapping the side of his nose. "Seen enough of them in my time. Sent you on ahead, did they? Wise, very wise. Keep it between you and me, young fellow. Don't want the ladies getting upset."

I felt confident in assuming that Brigadier James was a patient at the hospital. What worried me more than the direction of our conversation was the shotgun he still held in the crook of his arm. My suggestion that I carry it for him met with indignation.

"Certainly not," said he. "Never know when you might need it." Leaning closer, he lowered his voice to share a confidence. "They're everywhere, you know. Cunning little devils. There's talk of them being trained by... the _other _side."

"Trained?"

"To dig holes. Innocent enough you might say, but you get the cavalry galloping across a field of holes and you see how many horses are brought down. Best thing to do is to shoot them, you know."

"Horses?"

"No, man, rabbits! Scourge of the battlefield, rabbits. You've heard what happened to William III? Nasty business. His horse fell down a rabbit hole, he broke his shoulder and that was the end of him."

"I always thought it was a molehill that was to blame."

The Brigadier put a finger to his lips. "Keep your voice down. That's how we plan to fox this rabbit infestation of theirs. The moles are working for us, you see. The rabbits dig the holes, then the moles fill them in again. Hah! Dashed clever, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes, indeed."

"But I do wish they wouldn't practice on our lawn," came a voice from behind us. I turned to find a portly, round-faced gentleman in a checked yellow waistcoat strolling in our direction. "Good morning, Brigadier," said he. "How goes the campaign?"

The Brigadier stiffened and, with a final venomous stare in my direction, addressed this newcomer briskly. "Ten incursions in the past night," he reported. "And a sighting of the enemy down by the river."

"Dear me, those rabbits are prolific. I'll have a word with our gamekeeper, see if he can help you, Brigadier. Now, why don't you join the others? Cook has made fresh gingerbread and the new edition of _The Strand _has arrived."

"What about the enemy?"

"They won't attack while you have tea."

"Quite so, quite so," said the Brigadier. "Gingerbread, you say?"

"Hot from the oven." The shotgun was gently extracted from his grasp and he was pointed in the direction of a group seated beneath a spreading chestnut tree. "Poor fellow," said my companion, watching the old soldier amble away in search of his gingerbread. "He's been waging a war against those rabbits ever since he arrived."

"Is he quite safe with that gun?" I asked.

"We keep it locked away, but he always manages to find it. He's harmless really... as long as you're not a rabbit." He smiled genially, and I had the irresistible impression of being in the company of a latter-day Mr Pickwick. His eyes twinkled benevolently behind his silver pince-nez as he extended a hand in greeting. "Welcome to Lullingfield Manor, by the way. I'm Dr Erasmus Gordon. You're Mr Watson, I take it."

"_Dr_ Watson, actually."

"Forgive me, but Mr Sunley at the reception was somewhat vague as to details. Pleased to meet you, Doctor. You have a particular interest in mental disorders? It is your specialism, perhaps."

"No, I was an army surgeon before I went into civil practice."

"Then you have the advantage over me. I am only a poor specialist, treated with the utmost suspicion on account of my dealing with people's 'nerves', as we in the profession call it." He chuckled. "If one could be a general specialist, then how much the better for all concerned. I'm sure it's the reason why I can never get seats at the theatre. Now, Dr Watson, how may I be of assistance?"

"I'm here to visit my cousin, Mr James Watson."

Gordon's eyes narrowed and gleamed faintly with surprise, no doubt wondering how a lowly general practitioner could afford the fees at such an institution as Lullingfield Manor. "Yes, yes, I see," he commented. "I did wonder about the similarity of names."

It had been Mycroft Holmes's stipulation that his brother's condition never be known, lest it cause a shadow to fall over the question of his judgement and tarnish his reputation. In a practical sense, this had taken the form of a ruthless purging of his identity. I understood the reasoning, but I lacked his severity of nature and had been moved to lend Holmes my name after he had been stripped of his own. I trusted he would forgive the liberty I had taken in bestowing him with a less than illustrious epithet and that he would not be too offended at the notion of being adopted by the Watson clan.

"Well, now," said Gordon. "There isn't much to tell at the moment. He was only admitted on Tuesday, so, as I'm sure you appreciate, it is too early to speculate."

"Yes, I understand. How is he?"

"Quiet now. He was very agitated when first he arrived and suffering from the most grievous delusions, poor fellow. Did you know he is quite convinced his name is really Sherlock Holmes?"

My stomach churned. "Is he?"

"Yes, indeed. I must say, we found that most amusing." Whilst Gordon extracted his handkerchief to dab away at the tears of merriment that had beaded at the corners of his eyes, I gave silent thanks that Holmes's insistence had been attributed to nothing more than delusional ravings. "Well, with a name like Watson I should have expected it," the doctor went on. "Identification with a famous person is not uncommon. We've had them all – Napoleon, Julius Caesar, even one lady who responded only the name of Cleopatra."

"A most exalted company."

"And troublesome," Gordon confided. "As it happened, we had the lady and 'Julius' here at the same time. My word, did the sparks fly! We had to keep them apart, given their past history."

I smiled weakly, unable to share his amusement.

"Well, well, delusions such as these take the strangest forms. Often we find in conversation with the family that the afflicted individual has always been given to certain 'fancies', if you see what I mean. Tell me, Dr Watson, would you say that was true of your cousin? Has he always been erratic in behaviour and eccentric of habit?"

I thought back to Persian slippers stuffed with tobacco, a wanton disregard for the tidiness of our rooms, of indoor pistol practice, and correspondence speared to the mantelpiece with a knife. I caught myself smiling at the thought of cigars that left a black smear across the lips on account of their being kept in the coal scuttle, and realised with great sorrow that unless by some miracle Holmes recovered, never again would I have to complain about the strange relics that appeared from time to time in the butter dish.

"Yes, he has," I replied in answer to the doctor's question. "It was never as pronounced as it has been in this last month or so."

Gordon nodded thoughtfully. "Dr Rochdale mentioned something about a poisonous vapour precipitating the crisis?"

"Yes." I saw from his expression that he expected a little more information. "My cousin was – is – something of an amateur scientist."

"Ah, I see. An experiment that went wrong. Unfortunate. Usually these things clear up in the fullness of time; however in some rare cases, the effects are not so much lingering as permanent in nature. A weakness is created, you see, what might be described as a pathological and morbid deterioration of the brain matter."

"You believe this to be the case with my cousin?"

"Had his condition worsened in the days immediately following his exposure, one might speculate that the effects were transitory. That it has taken time to develop, well, I fear does not bode well for a complete recovery. However," said he, brightening, "there is always hope. We have found that patients generally respond well to improvements in their general nutrition and the remedying of insomnia. The latter, we consider especially important in any course of treatment. The most disruptive of patients may awake after an induced period of sleep in a state of tranquillity and lucidity. In the case of your cousin, we have been alternating prolonged sleep periods with shorter intervals of wakefulness for mealtimes and other necessary activities. The result has been encouraging."

"He is eating then?"

Gordon hesitated. "Not willingly, I fear. He refused all meals at first. His lack of appetite and state of emaciation was such a cause for concern that we had to resort to artificial feeding. He protested most vigorously at first, then, after the first few times, he began to take food voluntarily, as is often the case. We often find that the sight of the feeding tube is enough to induce even the most reluctant to eat."

The mind can play strange tricks. One of my first memories of life on the wards as a lowly medical student was a practical demonstration on the methods of force feeding. The patient, an elderly lady paralysed by a stroke, had been rendered unable to feed herself and had been steadfastly refusing all food offered by others. What seemed to us a humane act that day was to her the cause of great distress. The fear I saw in her eyes transplanted itself in my imagination to an image of my poor friend. All my previous misgivings resurfaced with a vengeance, and I was ceased by the unreasonable impulse to have him discharged into my care with all possible speed.

I did not, of course. Instead I listened to Dr Gordon describing the diet he had prescribed during the process – the usual mixture of milk sops, egg yolks, dry wines and beef juice – and was thankful that Holmes had had sense enough remaining to bow to these well-meant attempts to make him eat. It was not how I would have approached the problem; but then, as I was well aware, I was too close to the case to be able to give a dispassionate opinion or to question standard medical procedure.

I did feel moved to mention, however, that Holmes at the best of time had a spare diet. If they were forcing him to consume a full meal three times a day, I could foresee future conflict, whether he was doing his best to eat or not.

"I'm glad you said that," remarked Dr Gordon. "I had to take him to task for not clearing his plate only yesterday. I'll tell the nurse not to give him such large portions in future."

We had made our way back into the house and into a wing that had less of the cheery aspect of the rest of the hospital. Save for the sound of our footsteps upon the wooden floor, it was silent, disturbingly so. Here resided those patients deemed not fit enough to join the others in the garden. Through the windows of closed doors, I had glimpses of green metal bed frames and crisp white sheets covering slumbering figures in the beds. Then, at the last of the doors, Dr Gordon stopped and began to fiddle with a large bunch of keys, trying to find the correct fit for the lock, finally succeeding.

"Your cousin is here," said he, leading the way into the room. "He had his three-hour spell in the bath this morning – I am a great believer in the value of hydro-therapeutics – and then we put him back to sleep. As you can see, he's quite peaceful."

There were no curtains at the barred window, allowing the full glare of the sun to penetrate the chamber and bathe the bed in brilliant light. Holmes lay on his side facing us as we entered, his thin face as pale as the sheets, his dark hair a sharp splash of colour against a sea of white. He was, as Dr Gordon had said, in a deep sleep, and I would have thought him dead had it not been for the almost imperceptible rise and fall of the bedclothes. While Dr Gordon took a moment to converse with a nurse in the corridor outside, I approached the bed and stared down at the sleeper.

In all our years of acquaintance, I had never seen him so still. Even asleep in a state of exhaustion in his chair, his hands would twitch and jerk and he would utter the occasional, unintelligible word before awaking with a start to flatly deny such a thing had ever taken place when I happened to mention his disturbed dreams.

In stillness, he appeared to be at peace, and I wished I could have shared Dr Gordon's confidence on that point. Not too long ago, Holmes had told me that he feared to sleep, believing that one night he might close his eyes and be unable to re-awake. At the time I had dismissed his talk as being wild and illogical, but how prophetic his words seemed now. Sleep had been forced upon him, plunging him into the realm of those very nightmares of which he had spoken, escape from which came only with consciousness. But what if there were no escape? What then would become of him, what damage would be done to his already fragile mind? And if they did wake him, would it be in time? Would anything remain of the friend I had known and admired?

It was as I had predicted. One whose conduct was distinguished by his refusal to adhere to 'normal' patterns of behaviour was at the mercy of those who thought they knew how he should act, what he should eat and when he should sleep. His very essence was being subjugated by those who thought they were helping, when in matter of fact the problem was only being compounded. Worse of all, I was powerless to prevent it happening. Holmes's fate lay in his brother's hands, not mine, and whatever my recommendation based on my visit, Mycroft Holmes would deal with his ailing sibling as he saw fit. How much easier it is to be dispassionate when not faced with the results of one's actions.

I sensed rather than saw Dr Gordon's return to my side, and for a while we stood in quiet contemplation. As time passed, I gathered he was growing impatient to resume his duties. With Holmes asleep and not due to be awoken until the evening, there was little to be gained in my remaining any longer than necessary.

"Are you quite satisfied, Dr Watson?" he asked, keen to bring the interview to an end.

I nodded. "I'm glad to see that his cuts are healing." Faint red lines and marks showed on the upturned palm of his left hand above deeper crimson and purple blotches, where the leather restraints that now dangled from the metal uprights of the bed had chafed and bruised his wrists. "At least infection hasn't set in."

"They were clean enough," said Dr Gordon. "Dr Rochdale said something about an encounter with a mirror?"

"He attacked it, believing his own reflection to be the face of an intruder."

"That is not uncommon. It could have been much worse, of course. He was lucky."

"Indeed," I concurred, although whether luck was involved in his subsequent fate was debateable.

"Well, then, if you have seen enough…"

I gathered that this was my invitation to leave. I had no good reason to linger with my duty in this respect done, and my task was now to convey my report to his brother. Dr Gordon relocked the door and led the way in thoughtful silence back to the reception hall.

"About your cousin," said he, as we paused to shake hands. "You mentioned a lethal vapour of some variety. Do you know what it was?"

I could hardly tell him the truth. "It was an exotic alkaloid poison. No other specimen is in existence in this country, if you are worried about others repeating the experiment."

"That is indeed a comfort, but I was wondering: how is it that your cousin survived?"

"I pulled him out of the room."

Dr Gordon hummed a little and regarded me with concern. "So you were also exposed to its effects. I only mention it because of your cousin's deterioration after so long a time."

"I had considered that."

"And?"

"I appear to have escaped any lasting ill-effects."

"Capital," said Dr Gordon, smiling benevolently. "But do be on your guard, Dr Watson. If you should find any symptoms developing, even the smallest thing, do seek a medical opinion without delay. Well, good day to you, sir."

With such advice ringing in my ears, I made my way back to the station. I had much to think about, possibly too much, for when the railway official asked to see my return ticket, I could not find it anywhere about my person. Under the disapproving stares of my fellow passengers, I had to admit that I had lost it, aware that this was the standard excuse of those boarding trains without paying. There is something to said for having an honest face, for on this occasion I was given the benefit of the doubt, although I did have to buy another ticket.

As I took my seat, the matronly lady opposite tutted and muttered something to her companion about not knowing what the world was coming to, while the man beside me gave me a sharp glance and retreated behind his newspaper. Suitably abashed, I fished inside my pocket to consult my watch – and promptly found the missing ticket.

Any relief I might have felt at having cleared my good name was tempered by another, more worrying consideration, that I had no memory of stowing my ticket in that particular pocket.

_**Continued in Chapter Eight**_


	8. Chapter Eight

_**A Case of Insanity**_

**Chapter Eight**

After the discovery of my missing ticket, I had an uneasy journey back to London. I told myself I was worrying unnecessarily; after all, one may lose things without the charge of mental deterioration being laid at one's door. And it was only a ticket – at his worst, Holmes had misplaced whole days without any memory of how he had filled them.

I consoled myself with the thought that if it was evidence of anything, then it must surely be the advance of old age. How long did I have, I wondered, before I became a credible imitation of that familiar figure of popular fiction, the kindly absent-minded family doctor, forever losing his stethoscope and always finding it tucked away in his hat?

I walked the short distance from Charing Cross across Trafalgar Square to Pall Mall and the Diogenes Club. Mycroft Holmes was in residence, so I was told, but not accepting visitors. I asked the valet if he would inform Mr Holmes of my presence, as I was expected. The fellow grimaced and replied that disturbing the gentleman when he was in 'one of his black humours' was more than his job was worth, but seeing as it was me and he knew my face of old, he would take the risk. When he returned, he wore a nervous smile and I was informed that Mr Holmes was waiting for me in the Strangers' Room.

Upstairs, I found the chamber empty, save for the corpulent figure of Holmes's elder brother standing in the bow window, as he had been at my last visit four days ago. As before, he had his back to me, his gaze turned to something outside. His hands were clasped behind him and clutched between the fleshy fingers I thought I detected a glimmer of white – a letter perhaps. His welcome was pleasant enough, albeit it perfunctory, and he had that air of broiling agitation that in his brother manifested itself in fierce activity when a case was not going according to plan.

Mindful not to outstay my welcome, having already intruded on his time, I kept my tale short and laid out the facts of my visit to Lullingfield Manor Hospital for his consideration.

"He is no better?" said he, when I had finished. "What a nuisance. Typical of my brother to conspire to cause the maximum of inconvenience to all around him, even in illness. I doubt a more selfish creature existed in the history of the world." He turned to me with a heartfelt sigh. "Forgive me, Doctor, if I sound a little harsh. I had hoped for so much more."

"We all did, Mr Holmes. His doctor is now of the opinion that his condition is irreversible."

Mycroft Holmes muttered something under his breath. "As I feared. Well, the crisis has broken and now we must deal with it. This letter," said he, brandishing the creased sheet he had crumpled in his fist, "arrived this morning. See what you make of it."

A cold hand closed around my innards as I read its contents.

'_Dear Sir,' _(it ran)_, 'we wish to lay before you certain facts what have come our way. We know about your brother. If you don't want it getting in the papers, I suggest you give us £500, otherwise we'll give them in Fleet Street chapter and verse. We'll let you know when and where we want it. Yours humbly, A Friend of Justiss'._

"Good heavens," I gasped. "Blackmail."

"Indeed," said my companion, easing himself into the chair opposite mine. "This is quite a novel experience for me. I've never had anything before that was worth anyone's time in demanding such a ransom."

"But how? How do they know about your brother?"

"Whoever 'they' might be. My thoughts exactly, Doctor."

He was gazing pointedly at me, his eyes so alive with a peculiar keenness and penetration that it engendered a horrible thought in my mind. "I hope you don't think that I—"

"No, no, of course not," said he, making a dismissive gesture. "Of the three people present in this very room when the discussion of Sherlock's condition took place, your good self is the only one I trust implicitly. Myself I also discount, since I have been fortunate enough not to pass five words with anyone since our last encounter. As for Dr Rochdale…"

He took up the letter and examined it minutely. "No, it is not his doing. If we allow that a man of moderate intelligence knows how to fabricate a document to appear less educated than he actually is, then we are left with the amount of ransom involved. Five hundred pounds is a niggardly sum, not a fraction of my brother's true worth. Indeed, I am not entirely sure if I am not offended by it. My first blackmail note has fallen far short of my expectations!"

"But, Mr Holmes, five hundred pounds is not inconsiderable."

"You have seen his institution, so you must allow that Dr Rochdale is already a wealthy man. Sherlock is worth more to him in fees for his care alone. No, that they have asked for so little suggests a lack of imagination on the part of the writer. It also suggests that they are uncertain of their facts. '_We know about your brother_' is meaningless. What do they know about him? It could be nothing more than that he takes his coffee black and disdains sugar in his tea."

"Then what are we to make of it?"

"Does anyone at the hospital know of his true identity?"

"The specialist responsible for his treatment, a Dr Erasmus Gordon, told me that Holmes had been telling them who he really was, but that he had discounted it as the delusional ravings of an unsound mind. He sees the condition a great deal, apparently."

"He should work in government," snorted Mycroft Holmes. "The condition is rife there. Indeed, I believe it is mandatory for high office. However," said he, sobering, "do we believe that this ransom demand is the work of the good doctor? No. The paper is poor quality and without a watermark, the type that may be purchased in quantity for a penny. The ink is cheap and watered down, and the pen used had a broken nib – you may observe the small blobs at the end of the curlicues. The writing itself resembles a spider's scrawl, and the grammar and spelling is atrocious. You will have noted from the slant, however, that it is the work of a right-handed man – a man attempting to conceal his own handwriting will invariably switch his pen to the other hand."

"What if he was left-handed?"

"Was he?"

I tried to remember. I had a clear recollection of our conversation in the garden, talking about the Brigadier and Dr Gordon holding the shotgun he had taken from him in his hand, but which one? I was acutely conscious of an overheated feeling about my head and the growing length of my silence as I struggled with the recalcitrant memory. Try as I might, it would not come. Finally, I had to admit defeat and apologise for my apparent amnesia on the subject.

"It matters not one jot," said Mycroft Holmes sympathetically. "Do not tax yourself, Doctor. This past week has been a trial for us all and it is unfair of me to expect you to remember such a trifling detail. You had more important things on your mind."

"Yes," I breathed, somewhat shaken, "that probably explains it."

"As for this writing, I should stake my reputation upon this being the work of a right-handed man. It is a mess, to be sure, but there is a satisfactory roundness about the 'O' that is impossible to achieve without great familiarity with the pen. Now, if we allow that all this points to a work of artifice by a clever, educated man attempting to make us believe otherwise, we cannot overlook the most interesting fact of all, one which I have yet to find practised even by the most artful of criminals."

"Which is?"

"The writer chewed tobacco."

I stared at him aghast. "How on earth do you know that?"

"From the envelope." He delved into his pocket and drew out the grimy, soiled article in question. "If you would care to look under the stamp, you will find the glue has a tarry quality to it, where the sender has used his own saliva in the solution. It would be a rare doctor indeed who indulged in such a habit. For these reason, I would say that this letter is exactly what it purports to be – an attempt at blackmail by an unimaginative blackguard, or, as more likely seems the case to judge from the use of the plural form in this letter, a group of petty criminals."

"How would 'they' have found out?"

"Has anyone inquired after Sherlock?"

I shook my head. "I have been in Richmond since Tuesday evening. The only person I have told is Mrs Hudson and then only what you advised, that a case had taken your brother to the Continent."

"So, to employ one of those hackneyed phrases that Sherlock bandies about, since we have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely… no, that's not it."

"However improbable, must be the truth," I finished for him, pleased that that was one memory that had not escaped me. "But if we have told no one, and you discount Dr Gordon, then…"

"Then we must have been seen."

"I could have sworn the street was empty."

"But for your Lady of Shalott in her bower-eaves, come to look down upon bold Sir Lancelot. Except in this instance, the curse has come upon _us_."

"Old Mrs Johnson at 215?" I said doubtfully. "I took great care to conceal Holmes from her sight."

"She – or someone with greater imagination on hearing her description of events – must have realised that a person was carried out of your rooms. It was not you, then clearly it must have been my brother. Does the lady gossip?"

"Incessantly. It is her only form of entertainment."

"There you are then. One should never discount the harm done by word of mouth. People place more value upon the confidence of a neighbour than anything they read in the papers. It is the personal touch, you see. It would also explain this rather vague reference to the writer's 'knowledge' about Sherlock. Something has occurred, they know that much, but not the particulars."

"Then what will you do?"

Mycroft Holmes pondered the question, his expression unreadable. "I have been debating that very problem for most of the morning," said he. "I cannot allow these people to take their suspicions to the press – once they start sniffing around the case, we may be certain that someone will light upon the truth. I have said before that it is imperative that word of this does not come out. Therefore, in the interests of the greater good, I see no other option."

"Surely you do not propose to pay them?"

"Good heavens, no. For now, they have only their nasty surmises; to pay them would only confirm what they suspect. No, I see that I must nip this particular canker in the bud. England expects, Doctor, and doing one's duty, as Nelson discovered to his cost, inevitably involves a degree of self-sacrifice."

My blood ran cold. I gathered I was about to find out just how ruthless Mycroft Holmes could be. "Mr Holmes, I hope you don't mean—"

"Of course not," said he, "nothing so drastic as that, Doctor. I shall, however, be sending Sherlock away, to somewhere his face and his name – and your stories, come to that – are not known. The Himalayas, perhaps?" he suggested with a mirthless smile. "It is clear to me that he cannot remain in this country. That formidable brain of his contains too much that could embarrass the highest in the land. Can you imagine the hold a foreign power would have over us if Sherlock fell into their hands? Or you, come to that."

I stared at him. "Me?"

"You have seen what my brother has seen, heard what he has heard. And then, worst of you, you set it down in print. I can tell you now, Dr Watson, that you were the subject of some speculation at Whitehall a few years back. Your sense of discretion was called into question. Oh, they do not mind so much about blue carbuncles in geese, engineers who lose their thumbs or silly young ladies accepting dubious appointments in out the way country houses. Nor did I mind mention of my own good self, even if I venture to suggest that that is how the writer of this blackmail note came to know of my fraternal relationship with Sherlock. What caused the greatest stir was your account of the business concerning that vanishing Naval Treaty."

"I gave no details and changed the names."

"That is not enough," said Mycroft Holmes briskly. "I am afraid, my dear sir, that you are delightful innocent when it comes to the affairs of state. At the time, I did not think you fully understood the implications of your actions. The French and Russian ambassadors were up in arms that there should have been any such insinuation of their dabbling in stolen state documents made against them. We all know they do, of course, as would we if the chance came our way, but it is something neither we nor they admit openly. Appearances are everything in matters of diplomacy, and you broke that unwritten rule of stating the facts exactly as you saw them, rather than honouring the pretence of ignorance. It took the devil of a job to convince them that it was nothing more than a pure work of fiction on your part."

"I had not realised it was a sensitive issue."

"Dealing with politicians is akin dealing with women, with many of the same inherent dangers – you must think before you speak in the certain knowledge that whatever you say will be taken down and used in evidence against you. In your case, there was talk in certain quarters of having you charged with high treason."

"Surely not!"

Mycroft Holmes nodded slowly. "I dissuaded them by pointing out that a public trial would cause them greater embarrassment than your story already had. I also said that you were harmless and…" He cleared his throat and looked a trifle disconcerted. "As well as a few other things of which I am not proud. Given the choice, however, between having your intelligence questioned and standing trial, I thought you would prefer the former rather than the latter."

"Yes," I said, numbly.

For many years I had railed against Holmes's excessive secrecy, believing that he did me a disservice in not trusting to my discretion in matters of brothers and closely-laid plans; now I had to wonder. I had listened to this tale with a sense of growing dismay and horror. I had known none of this. In my naivety, I had thought I was offending no one by my poor attempts to honour the name of the friend I had thought lost to the churning waters of the Reichenbach Falls. I had not realised I had raised the ire of foreign powers as well as that of my own government. I cringed to think how close I had unwittingly come to disaster, and could scarcely express my gratitude enough for the unseen efforts undertaken on my behalf.

"It was the least I could do," said Mycroft Holmes graciously. "I was already in a most unenviable position, thanks to my thoughtless brother, and having you come to harm because of his reticence in not forewarning you was unconscionable. It really isn't done, you know, to reveal that the government is fallible and that important documents get lost. It dents the public's confidence. I took the precaution after that of having a quiet word with your editor, who assured me that the next story was to be your last, dealing as it did with the events surrounding my brother's 'demise'. That was much safer ground."

Listening to this account, something I had often wondered at began to make sense. "Is this why Holmes put an injunction on my writing further accounts of his cases?"

"Yes. I advised him it was the best course of action. He said that he didn't want to offend you. I said that you would be more offended if you came to a sticky end on the wrong end of an assassin's blade. Believe me, Doctor, it does happen. The fate of that poor fellow, Cadogan West, should convince you of that." He delved into his pocket and took out his snuff box. "Give it time, sir, time and several changes of administration, and then you may write what you will, including that account of the Bruce-Partington Plans if you judge the case worthy of transcribing. But not now. You do understand? Good. Now, about my brother."

I waited in silence while he helped himself to a pinch of snuff.

"What a nuisance this is," said he, throwing his hands down onto the arms of his chair with ill-disguised annoyance. "I have already suffered disturbance enough to my routine, and there is yet more to come. As it is, I have had to inform Dr Rochdale that my brother must be moved. He is making inquiries about private asylums abroad. On Monday, the press will be notified that Sherlock has gone missing, thus pre-empting our blackmailers and foiling their schemes."

"And after that?"

He smiled grimly. "We can do no better than to follow Sherlock's excellent example. He died a literary death once, he shall do so again. Of course it means another memorial service, another empty coffin – as I say, tiresome. But you must forgive my morbid turn of thought, Dr Watson. I am not quite so heartless. He has a month to make a full recovery, nothing less will suffice, otherwise I shall have no choice but to inform anyone who is interested that my brother is dead. He cannot be missing indefinitely. That would create unhealthy interest and speculation."

"But what if he does recover?"

"I thought you said it was unlikely."

"There is one possibility." It was a slim chance, but one that had occurred to me during my visit to Lullingfield Manor Hospital. The opulence of my surroundings, so unlike any I had experienced at such an institution before, had made me think of those less fortunate, and those in one remote Cornish asylum in particular.

"What is this 'possibility', as you call it?"

"Not so much a what, Mr Holmes, as a where. Helston, to be exact. If there is any hope for your brother, I am certain I shall find it there."

"Then go," said he, "and I wish you the best of luck, for I feel you shall need it. Time is against us, Doctor. You – and my brother – have until Monday."

_**Continued in Chapter Nine**_


	9. Chapter Nine

_**A Case of Insanity**_

**Chapter Nine**

In the tiny churchyard of Tredannick Wollas, the most constant of visitors was the wind.

Salty breezes, unchecked by natural barriers, swept straight across the expanse of moor land from the ocean to buffet the tiny Norman church of St Petroc and tug at the tattered flag atop the stunted tower. They brought with them rain, in the form of heavy clouds rolling in from the Atlantic, stealing light from the sky and painting the land in dusky hues of grey and drab browns. It seemed appropriate, somehow, as though Nature had conspired to match her colours to my sombre state of mind and offer her consolation by a meeting of moods.

For here, on the rise of the hill keeping silent vigil over the straggling line of whitewashed cottages, only the hardy survived in company with the dead. Misshapen trees, their white arms reaching skywards in a silent plea for succour, clung to what leaves they could and offered scant protection from the gusts for the few birds whose plaintive calls were lost to the groans and howls of the perpetual wind. Shards of rock, weathered, worn and crumbling, lurked in the brambles ready to pitch the unwary into a premature appointment with the gravedigger.

In a quiet corner, where the mesh of tangled grasses awaited the attention of the farmer's sheep, three graves lay side by side. The oldest had a grey headstone showing the first attentions of lichen and inscribed with black lettering, which stated name and age, and ended with a line from the scriptures, expressing the departed's hope of life eternal. On either side, bare patches of clotted earth, sparsely peppered with strands of yellowing grass, showed where the newest arrivals had been interred. Simple wooden crosses had been planted at their heads, in anticipation of the time when they would be replaced with grander memorials to match that of the sister who had preceded them.

For the present, they faced eternity with little else but their names for company. Inadequate, perhaps, but enough for me to identify them as Owen and George Tregennis.

I had left London basking in the early glow of dawn and journeyed nearly 250 miles before most people had had their breakfast. My expectations had been high and my intention sound, namely to gain some idea of the progression of Holmes's condition before he was sent into foreign exile and thereafter into faked oblivion. If there was the remotest chance of recovery, his brother had to be told. If he was beyond redemption, then I would be happier in my mind – or at least reconciled to the fact – that no avenue had been left unexplored.

One way or another, whether for good or evil, I had to know.

The Helston public asylum had been everything that Lullingfield Manor Hospital was not: home to over a thousand patients crammed into a turreted, red-brick building with windowless outer walls and a heavily-barred entrance. Built ten years previously, already it was struggling with the problems of having too many patients and too few staff. The lack of money told. There were no gardens for the benefit of the residents, no afternoon teas or gingerbread to make their time there moderately comfortable. Through the crack in the wicket gate, I had glimpsed a cobbled courtyard, around which the patients milled in noisy confusion with barely a blade of grass between them.

I was not at all surprised to find that my inquiry had been met with rank suspicion, and the thin-faced phlegmatic doctor who came to answer my question positively exuded resentment. Yes, the Tregennis brothers had been inmates, said he, but they were not there any more. Where might I find them, I had inquired.

When he told me they had been taken home, my elation was indescribable. I fear I made rather a poor impression on the man, for I laughed with a sense of relief and hope reborn, and implored him to tell me what manner of treatment or medicine had been used to achieve this remarkable recovery. The doctor regarded me oddly and said that the remedy was the only one certain to cure all ills. With that, he slammed the door in my face.

I could have cursed him for his insolence. Instead, when it became clear that he had no intention of returning to answer my insistent jangling at the bell, I gave up the unequal task and lost no time in hurrying to the village of Tredannick Wollas some six miles distant. Whatever this miracle cure was, I told myself, the Tregennis brothers would be able to tell me what the obstreperous doctor would not. I would convey that information back to London and Holmes too would recover. How simple it had sounded, how also too good to be true – and like most things that claim that title, it was only when I reached the village that the doctor's true meaning began to dawn upon me.

Thus it was that I found myself in the gusty churchyard, among the wind-bent trees and toppled tombstones, listening to the call of the skylark as it spiralled higher and higher above the head of a tawny-winged merlin. To sing in the face of almost certain disaster seemed foolhardy, but the skylark knew what I did not, that as long as it stayed above the predator it were safe. Slip below his talons, and it would never sing again.

As a metaphor for the human condition, it seemed to say that one should never accept defeat, not even when the odds appeared insurmountable, for opportunities were wont to present themselves in the unlikeliest of places. I could find little reason to join the skylark in his optimistic song, however. What had started in Cornwall had ended here. Our journey had taken us from uncertainty to despondency, and what remained of our hopes was buried beneath the tormented grass.

Strange how it is that one is always aware when the final moment has lapsed. So much anguish and excitement precedes it that one expects a tremendous outpouring of fury or some great rending of Nature. Yet resignation is a creature of solitude. Alone with my thoughts, it was left to the wind to raise a sob as it swept on over the silent sleepers to the blasted moor beyond, and to the skylark, singing its song of triumph to the thickening heavens as the merlin gave up its assault and withdrew from the field to perch, panting heavily, wings held from sides, on the apex of the church roof.

My gaze turned again to the leaning wooden crosses. Taking up a stone, I knelt, righted the nearest and hammered it deeper into the solid earth. I had finished with the other when a cry rose up behind me, shrill and petulant.

"You there, what do you think you're doing? Leave that alone, d'you hear me!"

The voice, familiar even after the distance of several months, made me turn. The vicar, Mr Roundhay, as was ruddy-cheeked and untidy as ever, although there was a certain wariness about his manner now that had not been present before.

He blinked, started and his generous features folded into a plethora of wrinkles and creases as he smiled broadly in recognition.

"My word, Dr Watson," said he, shaking my hand in enthusiastic greeting. "This _is_ a pleasant surprise. Do forgive me, sir, but I thought you might one of those godless trophy hunters. We've had no end of trouble from them since the press made much of what they called 'The Cornish Horror'."

"Good to meet you again, vicar," said I. "Trouble, you say?"

"Oh, these people think nothing of stealing from the dead. Positively ghoulish, it is. Five crosses I've erected here and everyone has gone missing. Do you know I even caught two ladies trying to steal earth and pebbles from the churchyard to use as charms against evil? What is the world coming to, when people think nothing of desecrating sacred ground in such a manner?"

His ire spent, his small eyes flickered with interest in my direction.

"But I am being most impolite," said he. "What brings you again to my little parish and so soon? Another holiday, perhaps?"

"I was passing," I lied.

"Indeed," said he, blithely unquestioning of my reasons. "Well, you are most welcome, sir, always. Mr Holmes is with you?"

He let the question hang and glanced about expectantly as though he expected him to spring pixie-like from behind the nearest tree.

"No, Mr Holmes is abroad." Had I had time to think about it, I might have been concerned at how easily I was finding it to deviate from the truth. "I am here alone, as I have had business in Helston. While I was there, I remembered our unfortunate friends and inquired at the hospital. I was told they were here, although I did not expect to find them in your churchyard, Mr Roundhay."

The vicar gazed unhappily at the new graves, his face contorted into a spasm of sorrow. "A most regrettable business," said he. "That such wickedness should thrive in men's hearts is scarce beyond belief. To kill one's own siblings, Doctor, and in such a manner – why, it speaks of excessive cruelty of the worst kind. And then, what savage horror, to join them in their fate? Was it remorse or was it madness, as the newspapers said? I fear we shall never know."

Since Holmes had allowed Dr Sterndale to go his own way, a suitable explanation had been needed to account for the death of Mr Mortimer Tregennis. Whether by good fortune or a little prompting from Holmes himself, his had coincided with that put forward by the police, that Tregennis had killed himself with the same toxic agent – the county coroner had been at a loss to say quite what it might have been – as that he had used on his brothers and sister while the balance of his mind was disturbed. They had appeared satisfied with that theory, and Holmes had felt no obligation to advise them otherwise.

"To have been so mistaken about the man," the vicar went on. "I always thought him reserved, but sly, and with murderous intent in his heart? Why, Doctor, the man lived beneath my roof. We sat at the same breakfast table. Good heavens, he even read _The Times_. Well, it just goes to show how wrong you can be. He seemed so moral and upright."

I sympathised with his plight. "Appearances can be deceptive, Mr Roundhay."

"Oh, you do not need to tell me that," said he, with relish. "Only last week I made the capital error of confusing a Saxon burial with a Roman – and all because of one misplaced piece of tessera. Quite unforgiveable." He pursed his lips as though remembrance of the incident had brought a bad taste to his mouth. "As it was, the grave was that of a warrior buried with his weapons, or what remained of them. I have retained several of the artefacts, if you would care to see them."

"Another time, perhaps," said I.

The last time we had accepted such an invitation from the amateur archaeologist, he had been flattered, and we had spent a long evening pouring over broken pieces of pot and tile while the vicar enthused about the differences between Iron Age and Roman pottery. Even Holmes, with his own, not inconsiderable store of knowledge about the subject, had been defeated into silence by Roundhay's fervour, and later declared that any good effects he had derived from the good Cornish air up to that point had been dispelled after several hours in the vicar's wearisome company.

That aside, however, my interest was less in the Saxon dead than in the recently departed.

"Such a tragedy," said he, when I inquired as to the cause of their deaths. "Truly is the life of man short and full of misery. In the circumstances, when I heard of Owen and George's demise, I felt it only right that they be interred here with their sister. Mortimer is elsewhere."

His gaze turned to the north end of the church, where a rectangle of yellowing grass showed the location of the grave of the other member of the unfortunate Tregennis family.

"We are taught to forgive," said he, shaking his head in sorrow, "but I fear I have found it most difficult. I visited them several times, you know. Their condition never improved. More like wild animals than men they were, snarling and uttering terrible profanities. Owen died but a month ago. A seizure, so they said, some strange apoplexy that came upon him quite suddenly. George followed several days later."

His face paled as he called upon the memory of the event.

"I was in Helston at the time, making the arrangements his brother's funeral. They told me George had been found dead in his room. When I got there…" He swallowed heavily. "I shall never forget the sight of it, like a scene from the slaughterhouse. The blood, Doctor, so much blood. Do you ever become used to the sight of it? Poor George, it seemed he had been insisting there were devils in his room and that after dark they would emerge to torture him. His doctors had been forced to restrain him, but that night he slipped his bonds. In a misguided attempt to escape their attentions, he had gnawed through his wrists and opened his veins."

He drew out his handkerchief and mopped his brow. "I have seen many things in my time," he continued unsteadily, "but never anything like the horror of that room. What madness, what derangement of the senses would drive a man to such lengths?"

Most likely the sort, I reflected, that started with a man obsessing about the roots of an extinct language and deteriorated into his seeing thieves and robbers in the looking-glass.

The vicar was welcome to his speculations, but I had heard enough.

I am ashamed to say that I terminated our conversation rather abruptly after that. I had come with questions; that I did not like the answers was not the fault of Mr Roundhay, although he it was who bore the brunt of my brusqueness that day. I left Tredannick Wollas, dejected and depressed, having learned nothing of advantage, save that a grisly end awaited my friend. Looking back, I saw the bemused figure of the vicar waving to me from the sagging porch of his moss-covered church. The skies above rumbled, the merlin took flight from its vantage point atop the roof and the skylark ceased to sing. It was time to return to London.

As the train pulled away from Helston station and rain started to lash the glass in long vertical lines, I tried not to dwell upon what I had discovered. I tried to find some interest in the newspaper, some distraction in the watery landscape, and some escape from the dark turn of my thoughts. The task was an impossible one, and I saw that certain facts now had to be faced.

Two months after exposure, the brothers were dead, either by organic failure or by some macabre act of misadventure. I would have to tell Mycroft Holmes, who would pass the news on to Dr Rochdale. What then for my poor friend? More soporifics, more forced feedings, more confusion and delusion until the progression of the illness took its natural course. Worst of all, he would have to endure it alone, in some foreign clime, separated from friends and family. Not even his most irreconcilable enemy had wished such a fate upon him. As much as I hated it, I caught myself hoping that the end, inevitable as it was, would be sooner rather than later, to end his suffering – and mine.

Whether it was the rocking of the train, the tedium of the journey or my weariness of mind, at some point as we rattled through the grey countryside I was overtaken by sleep. By the time I awoke we were long past Richmond and pulling into Victoria. The hour was growing late, and the thought of the hike back to Surrey was less than appealing. My thoughts turned to Baker Street, and I was ceased by that irrational impulse of those who teeter on the verge of upheaval and wish to cling to the remnants of the past. I was in need of one last evening in our old rooms, if only to pretend that at any moment I would hear that confident step upon the stair and know that all was well.

The gaslight was on in the hall when I entered, although I knew Mrs Hudson would be out, as she invariably visited her sister on Sunday evenings. As a means of fooling opportunistic burglars into thinking that the house was not empty, it had been surprisingly effective, despite my reservations when Holmes had suggested it. I divested myself of hat and coat, and took myself upstairs with some effort, feeling that I had aged a good ten years in the last few days. I wandered into our sitting room with a carelessness of thought – and came to an abrupt halt when I saw an unmistakeable figure seated at the table.

"Holmes!" I cried. "Is that really you?"

I took several steps towards him, but he did not acknowledge me. He sat motionless, his gaze fixed in a glassy unblinking stare in the direction of the door through which I had come. I passed a hand in front of his eyes and still gained no response. Then it was that I became aware of another presence in the room, a portly gentleman in his shirtsleeves wearing a checked yellow waistcoat, with one of my journals in his hand and cluster of files around his feet.

"Dr Gordon?" I said, uncertainly. "What are you doing here?"

"Come to that, Doctor," said he, "I might ask you the same question."

"I live here."

"As does your alleged 'cousin'. Oh, yes, Dr Watson, I know who Mr Holmes is, even without your kindly confirming it when you entered just now. I must say, sir, it was a poor attempt at subterfuge. _The Strand_ is popular with the residents at Lullingfield Manor. There is something about those simple, self-pitying stories of yours which appeals to the addled and weak-minded. Without the resemblance and the coincidence of the names, I should have dismissed Mr Holmes's attempts to tell me who he really was as nothing more than the ravings of a lunatic."

He placed the journal he had been browsing almost reverently on the pile and stood to face me with a bold air of defiance. The genial demeanour had gone, and the features that had previously danced with merriment now bore a smirk of contempt. Deep lines of cruelty were riven about the mouth and the beetling brows gave his eyes the appearance of a bird of prey.

"What is it you want?" I demanded.

"A life of luxury," he stated wryly. "Isn't that what everyone wants? If my patients are good enough to make the occasional 'donation' to my cause, then who am I to deny them that right? After all, I have to listen to their self-indulgent complaints. It is only right that I receive some compensation for having to tolerate this parade of hysterical women and distressed gentlemen."

I could not contain my disgust, both at this sickening revelation and my own failure to have been so utterly mistaken about the man. "What sort of doctor are you that you would exploit your patients in this manner?"

"A wealthy one, thanks to the generosity of certain individuals. Mr Holmes was kind enough to suggest a more lucrative avenue for my consideration." He tapped the uppermost file. "You have recorded some very delicate cases, Dr Watson. I cannot help but feel that the personages involved would pay very highly to keep their sordid affairs out of the papers."

"Blackmail," I said. "So, that is your game, Dr Gordon. Am I right in supposing that it was you who sent the ransom demand to Mr Mycroft Holmes?"

"Ah, that was not my doing," said Gordon, almost apologetically. "Most inconvenient for me, because I have had to alter my plans somewhat. Mr Holmes is going on a journey tomorrow and we had to secure his files and papers before that happened. He's been so very worried about them failing into the wrong hands. Isn't that right, Mr Holmes?"

A single word of affirmation was uttered in answer to Gordon's question. It pained me to hear Holmes's voice robbed of its strength and mastery, and reduced to the flat, monosyllabic replies of one who seemingly has no will of his own. He remained quite still in his chair, his unseeing gaze never wavering from the door, as though the energy required for movement was either beyond his power or command.

"What have you done to him?"

Gordon's eyes narrowed. "I do not like your tone, Dr Watson. I have helped him, which is more that what you did or anyone else for that matter. He came to me a deranged wreck of man; now he is calm and manageable. All I have done is to plant a suggestion in his mind."

I stared at Holmes, suddenly understanding his trance-like, unresponsive state. "You hypnotised him?"

"If you wish to give it a name, then yes, I did. It is all very well for the French psychologists to speak of its efficacy in treating hysteria, but I have found a much more lucrative use for the technique. I saw the potential in Mr Holmes from the outset." He tapped the side of his head. "All those dirty little secrets hidden away in that formidable brain of his – too good to waste, don't you agree? He proved a most receptive subject. It really was most satisfying. He trusts me implicitly, did you know? He told me that I was to have all his papers, and, well, here I am. I hope you don't mind."

It was all I could do to keep my temper. To have this unctuous, odious little man taking advantage of the patients entrusted to his care and to see him now, laughing at my poor friend was more than I could bear.

"This, Dr Gordon, is outrageous," I declared.

"Come now, Dr Watson," said he, all too reasonably for my liking. "You say this only because you had not the imagination to think of it first. Admit that it has a touch of genius about it."

"It is an abuse of the trust placed in you by your patients and their families."

Gordon frowned. "I find it strange that you of all people should take that position when you appear to have little scruple in recording the sins of Mr Holmes's clients for posterity. And do not tell me it is for anything but your own profit, or do you pretend that you had an altruistic motive for penning those tales of yours?"

"You cannot defend your behaviour by defaming me," said I. "The police shall hear of this."

"I'm afraid I cannot allow that." A small pearl-handled pistol had appeared in his hand and was not pointed in my direction. "The secrets in these files will make me a very rich man indeed. If you tell the police, why, they shall take them away from me."

"And you will go to prison."

"I think not," said he. "On what charge could they hold me? I shall say that I was attempting to treat Mr Holmes by returning him to his home in the hope that the comfort of the familiar might spark some return of sanity. But of course that would mean revealing the extent of his condition, and I suspect certain parties would wish that to be avoided at all costs."

"Those 'certain parties', as you call them, shall hear of your conduct in either case."

Gordon shook his head, slowly, patiently. "It is never a good idea to threaten a man who holds a gun, Dr Watson, especially as you have now placed me in somewhat of a dilemma. I shall have those files and you will not stand in my way."

Keeping the pistol levelled at my chest, he backed towards the desk and delved into the unlocked drawer. When his hand emerged, he was holding another weapon, Holmes's own pistol, and on his face was set the most malicious and abominable smile that it has ever been my misfortune to witness.

"You should not have come back," said he, turning the revolver over in his hand. "For by so doing, you present me with something of a problem. I shall be taking some of these files with me – just the more sensational cases, I think; I am not a greedy man – but I can hardly go about my business with you knowing what I have done. I am afraid, sir, that you have become a nuisance, and I cannot abide a nuisance. If you were a patient of mine, I should simply drug you and leave to you to quietly expire of your own accord. But, here you are, very much alive." His small eyes sparkled. "Very much in my way."

"A problem, as you say."

"I'm glad you understand, for you are likely to find the next few minutes most vexing. You see, I'm going to have to shoot you and create the impression that you disturbed burglars in the act of ransacking Mr Holmes's rooms. In many ways, it will be to my advantage in dispelling any doubt in the mind of my potential 'donors' that my information is genuine and my intent sincere. Nor would any suspicion fall on me from official quarters as those involved shy away from sharing their financial arrangements with outsiders. Yes, a most admirable solution."

Gordon inched his way across the room and pressed the weapon into Holmes's hand, folding his fingers around the trigger.

"I'm going to let your companion do the honours," said he. "My own pistol, although a deterrent to the average footpad, is no weapon for a clean kill. And the practical side of the business I do find most disagreeable."

"You have my sympathies."

He chuckled. "Oh, I do admire gallows' humour. Who was it refused a glass of beer before his beheading on the grounds that he would never be able to keep it down? Most amusing. As for you, Dr Watson, I thought you would appreciate the gesture. Murder is such a personal affair, and much better handled between friends than enemies."

With that, he placed a hand under Holmes's arm and helped him to his feet. "Mr Holmes," said he in an authoritative voice. "Look who is here. It is Professor Bennett come to steal your manuscript. He will stop at nothing to discredit you and your work. You must shoot him, Mr Holmes."

To my consternation, I saw some spark ignite in his dulled eyes. He saw, not me, but some figment of his imagination. He had held a gun to my head before and I had believed then, as I believed now, that he meant to use it.

"Do it, Mr Holmes," Dr Gordon urged. "Shoot him now!"

_**Continued in Chapter Ten**_


	10. Chapter Ten

_**A Case of Insanity**_

**Chapter Ten**

"Professor Bennett means to steal your work, Mr Holmes. Shoot him now!"

Having been shot once before and suffered the crippling after-effects ever since, I was in no hurry to repeat the exercise. Quite how it was to be avoided, I could not say. Sherlock Holmes is a very good shot – anyone who has witnessed his fancy for decorating walls with initials can testify to that – and, as confused as he was, I did not doubt that he was still capable of inflicting serious, possibly fatal injuries upon me. How much ire had he reserved for this unassuming professor of languages, that was the question. The answer to that would determine whether I should expect a minor wound or instantaneous death.

I was mindful too that Dr Gordon still had his own pistol trained on me. Small though it was and coward that he might have been to have another do his dirty work for him, I suspected, if pushed, he would use it. Greed can give even the most reluctant murder foul and loathsome courage.

On the whole, I fancied my chances were slightly better against Holmes's revolver and whatever remained of his sanity. That he had not shot me already was cause for hope that some remnant of his intellect was staying his hand.

"Holmes, come to your senses," I urged. "It's me, Watson. You know it is."

"Silence!" Gordon commanded. "We are not deceived by your tricks, Professor Bennett. You should not have come here. That was your mistake, sir. Mr Holmes," said he, briskly. "This man will destroy you unless you destroy him first. You must act, and quickly!"

There was nothing of the friend I had known in those wild, staring eyes. He did not recognise me; any remembrance of our former acquaintance had been obliterated. If I felt anything in those moments when I saw the skin pale to yellow around his tight knuckles, it was anger, not for what was about to happen, but at the cruelty of a disease that could steal away a man's life and leave him at the mercy of parasites like Gordon.

"For heaven's sake, do as you're told!" Gordon yelled, growing increasingly impatient at his prolonged hesitation. "Shoot the fellow and have done with it!"

The trigger inched back. A cold sweat prickled on the back of my neck. And suddenly the gun was swept round in an arc that rocked Gordon on his heels and caused him to drop his own weapon. He staggered back, clutching at the furniture for support, his eyes wide with disbelief at the horror of the thing, the mirror of my own as I stared at Holmes, in an instant returned to his former masterful state, calm, assured and utterly in control, both of himself and our situation.

"I'm afraid I cannot oblige, Dr Gordon," said Holmes in his natural voice. "Dr Watson has been of use to me in the past and to shoot him now would hardly be fair reward after years of faithful service."

Gordon gaped at him, his mouth working up and down like the dying gasps of a stranded fish. "It's not possible," he gibbered. "You were under my control."

"That is what you were supposed to believe. The hypnotic state is surprisingly easy to contrive, and you needed very little convincing. But then I dare say that you encounter very little opposition to your methods. Your patients are most unlikely to object when you profess to be helping them. Watson, do lower your hands. We have had drama enough these last few days without allowing this unpleasant scene to descend into farce. As for you, Dr Gordon, take a seat."

"No, no, you can't—"

"I said, _sit down_!"

Holmes's fierce expression was enough to send a shiver down the spine of the boldest man. Gordon fell obediently into the nearest chair and stared from one to the other of us with increasingly desperate eyes, his gaze finally falling on the pistol he had discarded.

"I would advise against any unwise move on your part," said Holmes, removing temptation from his reach and passing the gun to me. "I am tired and, as a result of your ministrations this last week, I hurt. It would give me the greatest pleasure to shoot you now and leave you to writhe on our hearth rug, but that privilege belongs to several others and I would not deny them their day in court."

Gordon bared his teeth in a feral snarl of contempt and gripped the arms of his chair with boiling rage. "You're mad, a danger to yourself and everyone around you," he grated. "No one will believe you. When the judge who signed the order hears of what you have done—"

"Ah, yes, Judge Fullerton." Holmes smiled with cat-like malevolence. "You do remember him? Of course you do. You treated his daughter for some slight nervous complaint several months ago. By the time you had completed your course of treatment, her mind was fatally disturbed. She took her own life, but not before handing over to you the contents of her father's safe, which included a considerable sum of money and a collection of antique coins. No one was ever caught for the theft, and Fullerton said that his daughter's last days were tormented with the conviction that she had been somehow to blame, which indeed she was, but under your influence and guidance, Dr Gordon."

"You can't prove any of this!" the fiend growled.

"But I can, for you attempted to use those self-same techniques on me. You know, Watson, he really did ask the most impertinent questions. Where I kept my valuables, did I have any money in the house, when was Mrs Hudson away – the sort of questions that do not normally come within the sphere of one's doctor. And then, when you learned that I was about to be removed from your care, you were forced to act, which is why we are here now. Ah! Before I forget, would you mind returning my emerald tie-pin, Dr Gordon? You slipped in it your pocket, I believe."

Gordon's small beady eyes held a hard gleam of spite as he took the jewel from his waistcoat pocket. He slapped it into Holmes's open palm, and then with a sudden roar of fury he leapt at him, knocking the weapon from his hand with the strength of one who sees the trap sprung around him and knows he has with very little to lose. Whether he hoped for escape or a quick death, I could not say, except that I was in no mood to accommodate his wishes in either case. I struck him on the back of his head with the butt of my pistol and Gordon went down without another word. As I stooped to check the pulse of the fallen man, Holmes darted away to his desk and soon returned brandishing a note.

"Watson, there is a lad waiting outside," said he, passing me the folded piece of paper. "Would you give him this and tell him to take it to the Diogenes Club for the attention of Judge Fullerton?"

"Am I to understand," I said, surveying this brazen display of audacity with more equanimity than I felt, "that your alleged insanity these past weeks has been nothing more than an elaborate charade?"

"I dare say there are some who would disagree with the 'alleged' part of your statement," said he with some amusement. "For my part, I am willing to accept your word in the matter. As for the second charge, well, I do not deny that a certain amount of dramatic creativity in the role was required on my part."

"Holmes, you owe me an explanation."

He made an impatient gesture with his hand. "Later, Watson, later. Let us first rid ourselves of this unspeakable wretch and then we may discuss the case at our leisure. With the price of Turkish cigarettes being what they are, it would be a travesty to waste a single one in such foul company."

As vexed as I was, I knew nothing would be gained by creating a scene. I left Holmes hauling the doctor over to the sofa while I went downstairs. I glanced out into the street to see a slim shadow detached itself from the gloom of the house opposite and came hurrying over. I recognised the boy as one of the band of urchins Holmes regularly employed from time to time to carry out tasks best suited to their particular talents. This lad clearly had a turn for speed, for no sooner I given him the message than he had scurried away into the night.

I returned upstairs to find Holmes in refulgent mood, a flush of exhilaration on his cheeks and none the worse for Gordon's impromptu attempt at strangulation. Indeed, he was improving by the minute, a condition, which, as glad I was to see it, did nothing to quell the rising sense of hectic outrage that was gnawing at my insides. In my absence, he had swept his hair back into a tidy approximation of normality, straightened his collar and was busily reassuming his ways of old as though the turmoil of the past few weeks had never happened.

"There is nothing quite like the comfort of a well-worn dressing gown to remind one of the pleasures of home," said he, emerging from his bedroom and thrusting his arms into the garment as he spoke. "It has really been most inconvenient being without it this past week."

If he thought making light of the matter in this cavalier fashion would so easily put the business to rest, he was about to be sorely mistaken. "That was your choice, I believe," I said tersely.

At my words, I fancied I saw a shadow of disappointment pass across his face. He paused by the fireplace and regarded me with an infuriating air of insouciance. "You see it like that, do you?" said he. "Watson, if I were to tell you that you were quite mistaken—"

"You would not have the bare-faced gall to do so," I interrupted him. "I have eyes to see, Holmes. Yet again, you have lied and deceived me. You have behaved in the most outrageous fashion these past few weeks, and I see that it was entirely for my benefit, in order that you might inveigle your way into Gordon's power. Deny it, if you are able."

"My dear fellow," he began in that languid manner of his, which served only to cause my blood to boil all the more.

"Whatever you have to say to me," I said, cutting him short, "I trust does not involve some half-hearted attempt to convince me that there was no other way."

Holmes at least had the decency to look abashed. "As a matter of fact, there _was_ no other way, Watson. What Gordon said was true, there really was no proof against him. Except for Lady Bosham's suspicions, I might never have been induced to take such rash actions."

"Lady Bosham?" I echoed. "Wasn't her house burgled recently?"

"Yes, you may recall the case. The papers dubbed it the work of 'The Mayfair Phantom'."

"I thought Judge Fullerton was your client?"

"Fullerton was one link in a very long chain."

"That started with your feigning delusions and raving about the origins of the Cornish language."

"Did I say that it was feigned?"

As usual, he was being less than candid, and this questioning of my every assumption was being to grate more severely on my nerves than I cared to mention. He was entitled to feel elated for having brought Gordon's crimes to light, but it was not a victory I had any desire to share. It was time I left, before I said something that I regretted.

"Does the condemned man at least get a chance to explain?" said Holmes when I stated my intention and started for the door. "You are entitled to feel aggrieved, but you will allow that you are a little interested."

I might as well try to deny that I was not overjoyed to see him restored to health. I relented, disdained the seat I was accustomed to take on such occasions and instead settled myself at the table, a suitable distance away from him.

Holmes registered my actions with a faint smile of understanding. "Well then, the Thursday after you left for Richmond, I was approached by Lady Bosham. I use the term advisedly, for the encounter was rather more vigorous than the verb implies. I should rather say that I was accosted, and in the Reading Room of the British Museum, of all places. She is a most formidable woman, Watson, and it was a testament to her fierce Caledonian spirit that she would brook no opposition on my part, try as might to dissuade her. After the altercation, I was compelled, nay, _forced_ to listen to her story on pain of permanent expulsion and the immediate withdrawal of my reader's ticket."

"I take it that this was in connection with her stolen jewels?"

"Quite so. I believe you tried to rouse my interest in the case."

"Unsuccessfully, as I recall."

Holmes's gaze darted briefly in my direction. "You were not as forceful as Lady Bosham, I fear."

I chose to ignore this provocative remark. "No doubt she wished you to investigate the burglary that resulted in the theft of the famed Bosham Diamond."

"No. She wished me to expose Dr Gordon as the criminal he undoubtedly was."

I stared hard at him. "She _knew_ he had stolen her jewels?"

Holmes shook his head. "If you remember, a feature of the case was that the thief had managed to enter a secure house, open a locked safe and then leave all as he found it, including that near impossible feat of bolting a door from the inside. The police, naturally, were baffled, but not so Lady Bosham. She knew who had been responsible; indeed she had caught him in the act."

"Dr Gordon?"

"Her stepson, the Hon. Henry Devis. She was awoken by strange noises in the night – the opening of a window as it transpired – and looked out to see Devis dropping a bundle down to a man in the garden below. This other man's face she did not see, although she immediately went to confront her stepson. He was on the point of returning to his bed and seemed unable to answer her questions or indeed register her presence. 'Like a man in a trance' were her exact words. He could not be woken until the next morning, by which time Lady Bosham had discovered the theft and reported the matter to the police."

"Why did she not tell them what she had seen?"

"Because she was convinced Devis was not to blame, not willingly at least. She told me that he was horrified when he was informed of the theft, almost to the point of collapse."

"As one would expect."

"Except that in this case, Lady Bosham knew her stepson to be quite incapable of such a deed. I should explain that his father had died when he was quite young and Lady Bosham had raised the boy as her own. He was a delicate youth and with a nervous disposition that made him entirely unsuitable to lead an independent life. Lady Bosham was insistent that Devis held her in the greatest affection, and I had no reason not to believe her. She was equally insistent that the recovery of the jewels was not her primary concern, but rather that others should not fall foul of our criminally-minded doctor here as had she and her stepson."

"But why," I queried, "if she had not recognised the man outside the window, did she believe Gordon was behind the theft?"

"I have told you often," said Holmes, "that a woman's instinct should never be undervalued. Lady Bosham professed that she had found something disagreeable about Gordon from the start, but for the sake of her stepson, had overridden her concerns, even persuading the lad to undergo several sessions of deep hypnosis, which the doctor had told her might help his condition. Devis's behaviour that night convinced her that some evil impulse had been planted in his mind and it was this that had driven him to commit such a deed."

"That sounds most unlikely," I said dubiously. "From what I have read, I understand that a subject under hypnotic influence cannot perform an act that would violate their normal behaviour or principles when conscious."

"That is what I told Lady Bosham, but she would have it no other way. You do see, therefore, that proving such a charge was nigh on impossible unless one had personal experience of Gordon's methods. And, as the doctor was good enough to demonstrate before a witness, his logic in the process is impeccable. You will note that he did not tell me to shoot _you_, for that he knew I would never do. Professor Bennett, however, was quite another matter." Holmes chuckled. "I am afraid my expression of vehemence against that learned fellow was enough to convince Gordon that I was capable of murdering him."

"And the others, Devis and Fullerton's daughter? What did he tell them?"

"There we must venture into the realms of conjecture. If Devis would never willingly steal from his stepmother, then we must suppose that Gordon exploited his affection instead. Possibly he told the boy that Lady Bosham's jewels were threatened by thieves and that they should be removed to a place of safe-keeping. On the night of the crime, Devis is woken up – by stones thrown at window, say – a sound that causes him to undertake set pattern of actions, after which he returns to his bed and the next day has no memory of the crime."

"But Fullerton's daughter did remember. What led you to her father, by the way?"

Holmes smiled. "I do not have to tell you how complex a mechanism is the mind of man. Chief among her symptoms were manias of persecution and paranoia. Whether she convinced herself of her guilt or Gordon's technique was imperfect, we shall never know. How I knew that she too had been a victim had is easier to explain. Fullerton was an old friend of the late Lord Bosham and had continued to offer the family his support. It was his suggestion that Lady Bosham take her stepson to Lullingfield Manor Hospital – this was before his own tragedy, you understand, and he had no reason to suspect any wrong-doing on their part. I conjectured that this was not the first time Gordon had acted in this way; an afternoon browsing the newspapers at the London Library confirmed this, in terms of the mysterious circumstances of the theft. Oh, by the way, I borrowed your ticket; I hope you don't mind. I have been most remiss of late in keeping up with the news and, after the scene with Lady Bosham, I thought it wise not to tempt fate by testing the patience of the head librarian at the British Museum by returning so soon. Thus armed with certain facts, I was able to put my findings to Fullerton. He was most affected by what I had to say and pledged his help in whatever way he could."

"Convenient for you and your brother that he also happened to be a member of the Diogenes Club," I remarked.

Holmes held up his hand. "If I had an accomplice in this affair, it was Fullerton and he alone. Mycroft was quite unaware of my intentions."

I started from my seat. "Then he still doesn't know? Holmes, you must inform him without delay. He intends to have the papers publish news of your disappearance. Someone threatened to reveal the truth of your condition unless he paid them money."

He seemed untroubled by this revelation. "Yes, I know. That was my doing."

"_You_ sent the blackmail letter?"

"No, I wrote it, Fullerton sent it for me. My dear fellow, I had no intention of spending a moment longer than was necessary in that place. I needed to force Gordon's hand, or rather I needed to spur Mycroft into action. Did he find the letter convincing?"

"He came to the conclusion it was from some common or garden criminal."

"Capital." Holmes rubbed his hands together briskly in a gesture of obvious satisfaction. "It is always agreeable to learn that one has not entirely lost that rare ability to confound one's siblings. The touch with the tobacco staining under the stamp was not wasted after all. As for enlightening him, I trust Fullerton is undertaking that task as we speak, for he knows as much about the business as you do now. Telling Mycroft of my recent exploits is not a task I relish. He will doubtless be unimpressed when he learns of my deception."

"He would not be alone in that," I said accusingly.

Holmes glanced over at me, a shade of apprehension in his eyes. "Even now, after I have explained, you still fail to understand my motives?"

"I understand, and approve. Men like Gordon are a blight on the profession. All the same, I feel entitled to question your handling of the affair. It seems to me that it is only by sheer good fortune that it has turned out for the best."

"Luck had nothing to do with it," Holmes replied. "I am the most careful of planners. There has only been one incident I had not anticipated, and that was your surreptitious administrating of a sedative. I must say that that single act near caused the collapse of an otherwise sound strategy. I was quite insensible for several days."

He would have to touch upon that, I thought bitterly, the one event in this unsavoury business that had been troubling my conscience ever since. "It was at your brother's insistence," I said defensively. "Your behaviour left him no other option."

"Well, then, do not feel too badly about it," said he, offering a faint smile as a sop to my mortification. "That was my intention from the outset. I have the advantage in knowing my brother. I know how he will act in any given situation. The mere mention of insanity is enough to provoke the most extreme of reactions. He has a very poor opinion of our ancestry. You will recall our conversation at Richmond on the Sunday afternoon, I think."

"Clearly. You said that your brother would have you committed to an asylum once he learned of your condition."

"I was not wrong then. Mycroft will always take the path of least resistance. Dr Rochdale was a member of Diogenes, therefore it was natural that to him my brother would turn, as did Fullerton before him."

"And you had me inform him of your apparent deterioration."

"I fear it was necessary. Mycroft would never have roused himself to investigate my plight for himself. I needed…" He paused, and I sensed his struggle to find the right and possibly less demeaning word than the one that had come to my mind. "Forgive me for saying so, my dear fellow, but I needed a messenger. I was compelled to exaggerate my symptoms. Dr Agar would not do; it had to be the Lullingfield Manor Hospital."

As usual, now he had explained the matter, it made perfect sense. What it lacked, however, was consideration. That, and a galling sense of his faithlessness in my own abilities, conspired to leave my mind far from settled.

"You could have taken me into your confidence."

"It is well that a man knows his limitations," said he. "You have many noble traits, Watson, but in the art of dissembling I fear you fall rather short. You needed to be convinced, so that you would in turn convince my brother, who would then take the appropriate action. I did warn you that Mycroft was ruthless."

"As ruthless as you are?" I accused.

It is rare that I give Sherlock Holmes pause; rarer still are the times when I have wanted to provoke such a reaction. That he did now told me that finally found the barb to penetrate his armour against the unnecessary distraction of emotion. His eyes betrayed, albeit fleetingly, that hunted look of a dog whipped by his master, wounded and yet reproachful enough to turn my anger back upon myself and leave me smarting from the cut. Whatever my own feelings, however, I could not forget so easily. I could understand, I might even condone his actions, but forgiveness was at present beyond me.

As small as that consideration was to him, to me it mattered. It mattered that I had thought I was witnessing his very destruction and been powerless to prevent it. It mattered that I had stood by his bedside and tormented myself with the thought of indignities wrought upon such a proud individual by the march of disease. It mattered now that he had taken another into his confidence and relegated me to the role of mere messenger, as he had put. It mattered – and it rankled more than I could say.

"Watson," said he, "I must confess I thought you would be rather more pleased than you appear to be at my return to health."

This was not the reply I had expected. The effrontery of the man was intolerable and inflamed in me the worst sort of response.

"I would dispute," I said hotly, "whether it is so much of a return as a dénouement. Have you any idea where I have been today?"

"Cornwall."

"Yes, Cornwall." I did not ask him how he knew. For the moment, I was too irate to care. "The Tregennis brothers are dead."

"Yes, I am aware of that fact. I inquired as to their fate several weeks ago. A telegram works just as well as a personal visit, and is more forgiving to good shoe leather than trudging through an acre of Cornish mud."

"No doubt you wished to know the progression of the condition so that you might better perfect your 'disguise'. Well, you should not have gone to so much effort. I needed very little convincing about the state of your sanity."

"What I have done," Holmes began.

"Is unpardonable," I interjected. "When you were in that hospital—"

"That is your own fault. You were told not to visit. I remember quite clearly telling you to forget about me."

"I should not worry about that," said I with some passion. "I appear to be forgetting a good many things these days."

He stared at me, uncomprehending. Neither of us had a chance to pursue the train of thought, for on the sofa Gordon began to moan and stir into wakefulness. His face contorted into a rictus of malice when he saw Holmes and he struggled upright, only to groan and clasp his hand to his bruised head. From the street outside came the rattle of a cab, followed soon after a knock at our door.

"Dr Gordon, your timing appears to be impeccable," Holmes remarked, surveying our glaring guest with equanimity. "That, I imagine, is Judge Fullerton with the forces of law and order."

"You unspeakable devil," Gordon growled. "I shall deny everything. No one will speak against me. I know all their sordid little secrets. I shall tell all I know!"

"I would advise against that," Holmes counselled. "The courts might interpret it as the delusional ravings of a madman. Then what would become of you, Dr Gordon? I understand some of our larger public asylums are not well run. Think about it, doctor, while my friend answers the door."

In the circumstances, it seemed the logical thing to do. I obeyed, as I always did, too battered in resistance and weary of soul to do much else. Fullerton, a careworn man in his late fifties, swept past me and on up the stairs with the energy of someone half his age. Two policemen trailed in his wake and long before they reached the landing, I caught the sound of raised voices as the bereaved father finally caught up with the man who had had a hand in his daughter's tragic demise.

I had no appetite for the business and less reason to stay. I gathered up my hat and coat and turned to leave, only to find my way blocked by a formidable figure that near filled our doorway with his bulk. Never have I seen such a look of thunder as terrible as that I beheld on the face of Mycroft Holmes that day. His jaw was set as stone and our exchange of pleasantries was terse to say the least. For once I was glad that I had not been privy to Holmes's plans if only to admit as much to his brother.

We were spared the uncomfortable business of trying to make polite conversation as down the stairs came the constables with their prisoner, followed briskly by an effusive Fullerton, who managed to shake everyone's hand thrice over, repeatedly expressed his gratitude and announced that a finer day's work was never done than this. Amidst the noise and bustle, I was aware that Mycroft Holmes's attention was focused not on the crowd around us, but on where Holmes stood on the half-landing, regarding the scene with an expression of weary amusement that rapidly faded when he saw the glowering face of his brother in the hall below. The atmosphere was tense to say the least, but it was not until we three were alone that the silence was finally broken.

"Mycroft," said Holmes with false affability. "This is an unexpected pleasure."

Occasionally, as an outsider often discovers when finding himself in the middle of a family quarrel, I have the impression that I cease to exist. This was one of those moments. Certainly I had to step quickly out of the way as Mycroft Holmes advanced towards the stairs under the ever watchful and, I dare say, wary eye of his sibling.

"When Fullerton told me what you had done," said he brusquely, "I had hoped he was mistaken. I had hoped that either you or he had been deceived by this apparent recovery. In short, brother, to find you in full possession of your wits grieves me more than I can say."

The corners of Holmes's mouth lifted into a grim smile. "As rare as your visits are, Mycroft, they always serve to assure me of your continuing good wishes for my well-being."

"Don't be facetious, Sherlock. This time, you have gone too far. Twice in as many weeks have I been forced to interrupt my routine to attend to your affairs, to say nothing of the distress and inconvenience you have caused to others. And yet, here you stand, seemingly unrepentant."

"I did what had to be done."

"The devil you did! And with scant regard for anyone else. No, Sherlock, this is not to be dismissed so lightly. Dr Watson," said he, turning to me, "you are still residing in Richmond, I trust? Then, please, take my cab. It is at your disposal. The hour is late and it would be unconscionable to detain you any longer when you have already expended time enough on a cause that has been not only fruitless, but thankless. Goodnight to you, sir."

This was evidently my invitation to leave. Mycroft Holmes, like his brother, commanded authority both in stature and speech, and it would have been a foolish man who thought to ignore or contradict him. Discretion being the better part of valour, I took his suggestion, gathered up my things and hastened into the waiting cab.

_**Concluded in the Epilogue!**_


	11. Epilogue

_**A Case of Insanity**_

**Epilogue**

Three days later, flaming June was living up her name, even in her dotage, and the pretty riverside town of Richmond was fairly baking in the heat.

Stifled into inactivity, I had forsaken the clustered houses and their airless interiors for the company of the sluggish Thames. Here too the breeze was stilled and the light that winked like so many diamonds on the black waters was painful to the eye. On days like this, the populace _sags_, for want of a better word; the men take to lounging wherever they can find a surface on which to rest their elbows while the ladies wilt gracefully beneath parasols of delicate lace and lament how summer seems to start earlier every year.

For myself, I had no thought other than to find myself a suitable seat in some shady nook and while away the afternoon with a book. Had I had my fishing tackle to hand, I would have tried my luck with the roach. But that would have meant my first returning to Baker Street and the inevitable reunion with Holmes, a prospect which held little immediate appeal. I had no wish to retread old ground, and disagreeable encounters are best reserved for stormy days when the belligerence of the weather may act as mirror of one's mood.

Besides, I seriously doubted whether we had anything left to say to each other.

That the feeling was mutual was evident from his prolonged silence. I had not heard from him nor, if I was honest, did I expect to do so. He could see no wrong and I could see no right. At least, I did understand _why_ he had acted as he had. That it was not how I or any other right-thinking man would have approached the business seemed not to have occurred to him. Contriving a means to get oneself committed smacks of recklessness – or perhaps something else.

I had had time to mull over the events and had come to the conclusion that either Holmes was lying _again_ – a fact I did not discount lightly – or I had misjudged him, another factor I could not entirely rule out. The one thing in his favour was that Holmes could never be accused of being anything but precise in his use of language, so that I had to wonder about his claim to have 'exaggerated' his symptoms.

In the light of calm reflection, his choice of verb was interesting. It implied the existence of an earlier condition, one that had been a pale reflection of the display he had put on for my benefit.

If I were to accept that our conversation on Sunday evening had been by and large the truth, I had to take him at his word that this grand scheme of his had only been put into action on the Thursday _after_ my departure for Richmond. I recalled my concern when I had returned after my first week away to learn from Mrs Hudson had Holmes's condition had deteriorated rapidly in my absence. If one set aside the midnight singing, his bitter recriminations about my unjustified interference, manuscripts filled with blank pages and nonsense about a war waged against him by the world of academia, it left the unreasonable obsession that had driven us from our Cornish retreat and Holmes into a near frenzy of study. That at least had been real, but I was no closer to an explanation for it than before.

At some point in the afternoon, I was joined on my riverside bench by a portly gentlemen, red of face and panting heavily, who fairly fell onto the seat and began to mop his glistening brow with a generous red silk handkerchief. After a few banal observations about the weather, he produced a newspaper, rattled the sheets in a manner calculated either to draw my attention or annoy me into departing, and began to make passing comments about the day's news.

Inevitably he lit upon the only item that held any interest for me.

"Nasty business, this doctor fellow stealing from his patients," he remarked authoritatively. "Heard about it, have you?"

"Vaguely," I replied.

Encouraged by having engaged my attention, he warmed to his subject. "Made a full confession, the blackguard. He'll get more than a rap on the knuckles for this, I'll wager. Not only that, there's talk he's to be struck off. Quite right too. If you can't trust the medical profession, who can you trust?"

One's friends, I thought ruefully, although even that was up for debate.

"Mind you," my garrulous acquaintance went on, "I knew a doctor once, odd sort of chap, could never look you in the eye. Bally fellow kept telling everyone they weren't right in the head, and it turned out he was as mad as a hatter himself! A case there of physician heal thyself if ever there was one."

Given my own lapses of late, this naturally roused my curiosity. "What happened to him?" I asked.

"Oh, ended up in a home for distressed medicos, I expect," said he jovially. "Certainly they carted him off to somewhere or other. Barking mad, he was. Always losing things, that was the worst of it. Kept turning up at his neighbour's house in the middle of the night asking if they had seen his umbrella, that sort of thing."

He chortled, but I failed to find any humour in the situation. If it is true that doctors make the worst patients, then it is because we are too close to the source of the problem to be objective. As reassured as I had been following Holmes's 'recovery' that whatever was ailing me was unlikely to be due to the lingering effects of Devil's-foot root, the question remained. I could think of any number of complaints that might be causing my current confusion, chief among them the strain of the last few weeks.

Doubt, however, is the cancer of the rational mind. Once the seeds are sown, no amount of reasoning will dislodge it. I told myself I was imagining things and half believed it too. But then that voice began to whisper and I had to wonder if I too, like my companion's troubled doctor, had taken my first steps down the road of insanity.

The crunch of approaching footsteps drew my attention from the dabbling ducks at the water's edge to glance up at this newcomer. To my considerable surprise, strolling unhurriedly towards where I sat, was Holmes, wearing a light tweed suit, a straw boater and looking for all the world as though he had just stepped off a rowing skiff. He was the last person I had expected to see – and consequently the very person who had therefore appeared, making the phrase quite redundant. However, cliché though it is, it was never more applicable than in my present case.

Holmes made no attempt to acknowledge me, despite my bald stare, and paused as if by chance before our bench. "Is this seat taken?" asked he, gesturing to the gap between us.

"Not at all," said my companion, shifting himself to one side to give him more room. The prospect of another person to engage in conversation clearly appealed to him. "Please, be my guest."

Holmes sank down with a sigh. "You are most gracious, sir," said he. "The day is warm, and I fear one takes one's life into one's own hands by indulging in undue exercise in such weather."

"Very likely, sir."

"I have always been of the opinion that exercise of the mind is a far more profitable activity. Learning is never wasted, and I have often found that those trifles which, at the time of acquisition may bear the mark of worthless triviality, inevitability prove to be the most useful. For example, when I asked you if this seat was taken, did you realise that I was employing but one of the 134 meanings of the verb 'to take' that Dr Johnson was able to identify in his seminal Dictionary? From that entry alone, one can understand why he defined his work as lexicographer as drudgery, harmless or otherwise."

The man quailed before this formidable display of intellectualism. "Is that so?"

"Of course, while that word may claim – or indeed _take_ – the title, and I dare say the _honour_, of being the longest of Johnson's entries, it stands amongst an exalted company of verbs whose every semantic nuance may change the shade of meaning depending on the user's preference. You offered me this seat, sir, accepting that I meant to sit, although quite equally my inclination could have been to remove this bench altogether. Is it not the case that from such subtleties of distinction that misunderstanding may arise?"

"No doubt."

"To those who claim that the English language is the easiest to learn, one must set stumbling blocks such as these. And again, we encounter yet another of those words whose meaning may change from sentence to sentence. The verb 'to set', I believe, is the nearest that 'take' may claim as a rival, although at a mere 88 entries, it falls somewhat short, as does 'to put' at 80, 'to stand' at 69 and 'to run' at— oh, must you go already?"

"I fear so," said the fellow, folding his paper and rising to his feet with as much haste as his unwieldy frame would allow. "As pleasant as the afternoon is, I have already delayed for long enough. Good day to you both."

Holmes began to chuckle to himself as soon as the man was at a respectable distance. "Dear me," said he, "I appear to have scared him off. Whatever could have caused such a reaction, I wonder?" He shot me a sideways glance. "I dare say you think that was rather rude of me."

"Yes, it was."

"But necessary. One can hardly speak freely in the company of strangers."

I contrived, following his own excellent example, to remove from my voice any trace of the emotion that might betray my feelings on the matter and thus be used against me. "You have something you wish to say?" I said, and winced at the tone of indignation that would not be bridled despite my best efforts.

He gazed at me, his expression thoughtful. "In conversation with my brother, it appears that my behaviour of late may have given cause for offence. On reflection, I fear that there is some truth in what he says. I have deduced that my intent may have been lamentably misinterpreted as nothing more than the cold-hearted actions of an out-and-out cad."

"And how have you come to this conclusion?"

"An intimate friend of mine disappeared on Sunday evening and I have not seen him since."

"Perhaps he is busy."

"I dare say that you are correct in that assumption. He is possessed of a most loyal nature, and he has of late stepped into the breach when a former acquaintance was in need of assistance."

"Then perhaps you should search for him there."

"My thoughts exactly," said he. "After some investigation on my part, I was able to trace him to a pleasant spot to the banks of the Thames, where I was firstly obliged to rescue him from the overbearing attentions of the local bore, for which he repaid my efforts by studiously trying to ignore me ever since."

"A problem," I observed.

"But not, I trust, insurmountable?"

"No."

A faint smile took shape on his face. "Are you very angry, Watson?"

I considered. "Better to say that I am aggrieved."

"Ah, that is quite a different prospect. Anger suggests extreme displeasure or exasperation towards someone or something. Such excessive emotions are always difficult to placate. Aggrievedness, however, is a much more reasonable state, being, as it is, open to reconciliation. Would you agree that is fair definition of your situation?"

I have ever known Holmes to be indefatigable. He did not disappoint on this occasion for his pursuit of my attention was relentless and wearisome.

"Holmes," I said with a sigh of defeat, "it isn't what you did, it's how you went about it."

"You mean in my role of _agent provocateur_?"

"I mean in pretending that you had been driven to the brink of insanity by—" I hesitated and shook my head. "Well, it doesn't matter now."

"No, do go on. Your line of thought was most enlightening. Driven to the brink of insanity by my own foolish actions, do you mean? If so, then I am forced to concur. Unless you meant your own inability to reign in my more reckless tendencies, in which case I cannot agree and must ask instead that you not reserve the lion's share of the blame for yourself. I am quite aware that I cultivate a certain eccentricity of habit. Indeed, I revel in it."

"I would not ask you to change," said I. "I would, however, ask you to consider whether the risks you insist on taking are commensurate with what you stand to lose."

"Isn't that the nature of the game? Without that spice of danger, life would be an endless procession of boredom with little to look forward to but the next meal. One must have stimulus, Watson. There would be little point in struggling out of bed in the morning if one lacked purpose."

"And if you destroy yourself in the process?"

"If you are referring to my sanity, I should not worry too much on that account. Some would argue that it is already fatally compromised, Mycroft amongst them. He said that I have raised serious questions about my soundness of judgement in ever pursuing such a course of action in the first place."

"Do you agree?"

Holmes smiled to himself. "I would say that there was madness in my method, yes. As it happened, the case was fortuitous. It came at a moment of crisis, precipitated, if you recall, by Professor Bennett's letter. Until that moment, I had been convinced, utterly, of the certainty of my reasoning on the origins of Cornish. That one missive was enough to shake me to the core." He brushed a stray piece of blossom from his knee and gazed out across the river. "It goes without saying that it did not sit well with me that I had been mistaken. I convinced myself that I stood alone and that everyone was wrong. I could not allow otherwise."

"I had noticed."

"Yes, you did, although, loyal friend that you are, you did not attempt to disillusion me on that point. Even if you had tried, I would not have believed you, not because you lack sufficient force to do so," he added quickly, "but because I could not permit it. The other day, you accused me of lying to you, a charge which is wholly justified. In my defence, however, I will say that it was not until Lady Bosham persuaded me to take up the case that any attempt at deception on my part took place."

I stared at him hard. "Then you _were_ affected by the lingering effects of the poison."

He nodded slowly. "Certainly it started off as such. There were nights when I did not dare to close my eyes. That naturally exacerbated the problem. I sleep poorly at the best of times and thus did not believe that I would be adversely affected by a further reduction in my hours of rest. In that, I was mistaken. I attributed my worsening symptoms to _radix pedis diaboli_. You may recall that I mentioned I knew about the fate of the Tregennis brothers? I inquired not to perfect my performance as you claimed, but rather to see what fate had in store for me." He released an uneasy breath. "It was not a pleasant prospect. I concluded that if I were to spend my last days in the grip of delusional ravings, then at least I could do some good before my reason entirely deserted me. That is partly why I accepted Lady Bosham's case and took such drastic measures. I believed most earnestly that I had nothing left to lose. Either I would prevail, or I remain incarcerated for whatever remained of my natural life."

"But at some point, the effects of the poison did wear off."

"Not that I would have noticed it. By that time, I was already consumed by an irrational dread of sleep. Thus the cycle continued. I do not need to tell you that sleep deprivation may produce the strangest of symptoms, chief among them being hallucinations, delirium, poor concentration and memory lapses. All I had to keep myself sane was my work. It was a distraction that became an obsession. I could not countenance my existence without it."

"And now?"

"Strangely enough, I am quite recovered. Whatever Dr Gordon's criminal tendencies, I would say that his medical skills are first-rate. I slept as I have never slept before and woke clear of mind for the first time in weeks. I should let you drug me more often," he added, regarding me slyly from the corner of his eye. "That was the least objectionable of the treatments to which I was subjected. Many more of those prolonged periods sat in tepid baths and I should surely have lost what grip on reality I had. As for his insistence that I eat…" He shuddered. "Let us say it was not an agreeable experience. I am sure they almost broke my nose with that accursed tube of theirs."

"You have no one to blame for that but yourself."

"One learns quickly," said he. "I have eaten more in one week than I would normally do in a month. If I never see a strawberry syllabub again, I would not be too disappointed. As food for the convalescent, it is most ill-advised."

I laughed despite myself. When I looked back at him, I noticed he was watching me with an expression of satisfaction, as though confident of having regained my favour. I was not so easily won over, although I must confess that my resolve was beginning to wane.

"How did you find me today?" I asked.

"I asked myself where a man of your thoughtful disposition might take himself when trying to ascertain whether the charms of Richmond were greater than those of Baker Street. Given your predilection for long walks and your natural gravitation towards large bodies of water, I posited that I might find you here, a supposition, which, I am pleased to say, was correct. Well, Watson," said he, turning slightly to me, "do you intend to buy Dr Tarrant's practice?"

I stared at him open-mouthed. "How on earth did you know that?"

"Naturally I called at the house first. Dr Tarrant was kind enough to explain the situation, how he and his wife were very much taken with the south coast, so much so that they plan to move there permanently. He also mentioned that he had offered his practice to you before placing it in the hands of an agent. I believe he is awaiting your answer."

I gathered that Dr Tarrant was not alone in that. Holmes feigned indifference, as though the matter was of little consequence to him, an act which was too perfect for his interest to be anything other than piqued.

"No, I don't believe I shall," I replied.

"Very wise," said Holmes. "Patients are the bane of a doctor's life, and patients in Richmond especially so. I blame it entirely on this damp river air."

Again, I found my ill-humour evaporating under this onslaught, and fought not to reveal the weakening of my defences, failing in my attempt miserably by smiling.

"Has anyone ever told you," said I, "that you are thoroughly incorrigible?"

"Mycroft mentions it from time to time."

"I'm surprised he is still speaking to you."

"He isn't, except for those times when he wishes to indicate my shortcomings, which are considerable, and my debt to certain of my acquaintances, which is equally so. For these things and more, I can only apologise and state with all sincerity that it was never my intention to cause harm. Nor did I realise that my behaviour might give others cause to question their own well-being." His expression became guarded. "I neglected to consider the implications of my conduct on you, my dear fellow, my partner-in-folly when we experimented with that wretched Devil's-foot root. Mycroft tells me you have been under a strain of late."

"How does he know that?"

"Watson, really, you should know by now that Mycroft misses nothing. Omniscience has its uses, after all, and apparently its limitations, which is why he holds a grudge against me for having so artfully deceived him. In your case, he mentioned that the last time he saw you at the club that you seemed preoccupied, worried almost."

"I have had a few things on my mind."

"Then there was your remark the other night. You said you were forgetting things. Would you care to elaborate on that statement?"

I shrugged. "I have had a several lapses of memory and misplaced a few things."

"And naturally you wondered if you were succumbing to the same condition as your afflicted friend. Well, I hope your mind is set at rest on that issue. As to a cure for your current malady, I believe a change of scene is indicated. I have had a missive from the Odoni family of Florence concerning some minor incident which has baffled the local police and will not occupy too much of my time. I wondered if you would consider joining me on this Continental sojourn."

"By all means. It would be my pleasure."

"And mine." With that, he rose to his feet. "Are you coming? If you are to disappoint Dr Tarrant, it is better done sooner rather than later."

I joined him and together we fell into a leisurely pace as we strolled along the towpath. "Before we leave this disagreeable affair," I said, "I do have one question. Why Cornish? I never understood that."

He threw back his head and laughed out loud, an unexpected and quite glorious sound that I had not heard for so long a time. "Ah, Watson, there you have me. How does one explain the unexplainable? It could have been anything; Cornish happened to be convenient at the time. I thought it would make my name."

"Your name is already made, Holmes."

"In certain fields less meritorious than others." He came to a halt. "Has it ever occurred to you, Watson, that I might envy you?"

I began to chuckle at the very thought, only to smother it when I saw from his expression that he was in deadly earnest.

"Surely you jest. What could I possibly have that you don't?"

"I would have thought that was obvious, _Doctor_."

I caught his emphasis. "You wanted to study medicine?" I queried.

Holmes shook his head. "Not at all. But these days, I find my thoughts turning to the path not taken. You completed your degree; I did not. I ask myself lately where would I have been today had I stayed on for that final year. Would I have been at the head of my profession by now? The undisputed authority on… well, whatever my chosen field was to have been."

"I have no doubt you would. However, I can't help but feel the world would have been much the poorer if you had."

"And you a few less grey hairs, my friend." He smiled ruefully. "I suppose it matters little now. Call it sheer vanity, but I feel that I would like letters after my name. Dr Johnson, it is said, would not allow his dictionary to be published until he had his 'A.M.' on the title page."

"I'm sure there would be no question of granting your wish given all you have done."

"No, no," said he tersely. "Where is the triumph in an easy victory? It must come from _me_, it must be torn from my very breast in the study of some worthwhile cause. I thought my thesis on Cornish would do it. I was mistaken."

"What of your researches into early English charters and your monograph upon the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus? The latter, surely, would earn you the acclaim you seek. Many experts said that it was the last word upon the subject."

"And yet it has already been surpassed. Have you read Fulkes's notes upon the Polytextural influences in the work of Dufay?"

I had to confess that I had not.

"It means I would have to rework my theories to account for the current debate on the origins of the 'renaissance' in music of the 15th century. And all because of an obscure reference in _Les Champions des Dames_ by Martin Le Franc of 1442 which speaks of 'a new practice'." He sighed fretfully. "I fear it is beyond even me. I shall have to hang up my pen and content myself with the fame of the printed word."

"You would settle for the 'idle smoke of praise'?"

"Even that."

"Despite your restrictions? And yes," I said, holding up my hand, "I know about that too. Your brother was kind enough to educate me as to the etiquette of diplomacy."

"Then we are both stifled." Holmes struck a loose pebble with his cane and began walking again. "I suppose there must come a day when we are free of all strictures," said he. "Until then, we must bide our time."

"So what now for your thesis?"

Holmes bowed his head in thought. "I have burned it. In the circumstances, it was the only decent thing to do. Another topic will present itself, one which may provide more fruitful lines of investigation."

"Burned it?" I echoed. "Then am I never to know the meaning of '_ud rocashaas_'? What did those words mean?"

"That, my friend, was the earliest written record of the Cornish language, dating from the 9th century no less. As to its meaning, it is a reference to the mind, of how it 'hated the gloomy places'. It had a certain appeal. The parallel with my own situation was exact. I have dwelt for too long these past months in places that were not so much gloomy as positively black. But all things pass. The sun shines and Italy beckons. Now, what say you, Watson, to our taking our time over this case? Florence is a city steeped in history and the collection at the Uffizi is unsurpassed. I dare say Scotland Yard could manage without us for a little while."

**The End**

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_A big thank you to everyone who took the time to review. To quote the incorrigible Mr Holmes, all's well that ends well... but only because Watson's such a forgiving soul!_

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_**Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson, et al are the creations are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Characters and incidents mentioned in this work are entirely fictitious. This work of fan fiction has not been created for profit nor authorised by any official body.**_


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